


CASE 107

by DannieU



Series: Parallel [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mpreg, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Everything Else, Seizures, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 55,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4428224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannieU/pseuds/DannieU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had always known, had always been separated, apart, had been frightened and alone and half-panicked for as long as he could remember. He pulled himself together. So, his soulmate had died twenty-five years before he had been born. That... That explained a hell of a lot, actually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Howard had just returned from one of his Arctic expeditions when Maria told him she was pregnant. Her dark eyes were wide, the smile on her face more genuine than anything he'd ever seen on her, and he heard his own laughter, felt joy bubble up inside him, and when he held his wife that night he felt closer to her than he'd ever been in all their years of marriage.

It wasn't until later that he began to make contingency plans, began to figure how to make his child stronger, happier, than he had ever been. Began to figure out how to make sure his child would be tied down by no one.

The name on Howard's own wrist tortured him still, even all these years later. The careful, artful script had long since faded, but the name was still there, a constant reminder of his failings, of his place. Of all the places inside him that had grown hollow.

For the first few years of his life, Howard had been just another poor immigrant kid from Brooklyn whose parents sold fruit out of a rickety cart. On good months things had been great. There'd been treats and new shoes and plenty. On bad months he and Edward had huddled together under the blankets of their bed in the unheated apartment, starved and miserable. Howard's mind had pulled them out of that apartment before he was ten, but in the end, if everything was stripped away, he was still that cold, starved child, so it had come as no surprise that his soulmate was another poor immigrant kid from Brooklyn. Howard had found him on the same day he'd lost him, had seen just a glimpse of his own signature on a skinny wrist before his own machine had closed around the kid. The man who'd come out of the machine had a blank wrist, Howard's name stripped away like all the other imperfections, because Steve was no longer just an immigrant kid from Brooklyn, and Howard was no longer a match for him. Even so, Steve's name had never left Howard's wrist. The bonds in his soul had never stopped grasping. The pain of it had never stopped, and Howard had never been able to bring himself to stop searching, because even if Steve would never be his, Howard still could not deal with the thought of him alone and cold in the ice.

That, that was what he had to protect his child from. But how did you do that? How did you save one child from the circumstance of humankind, from something every person in the world was doomed to suffer under? Ironically, the idea came from Maria, who would've never in a million years agreed to the plan. "If it's a boy," she said one day when he'd given into her begging and was escorting her through the snow covered garden, "If it's a boy, I want to name him Antonio, for my grandfather."

Just like that, it clicked. She was still talking, but he was past listening, mind racing ahead until the solution was as clear as the name he'd once seen on a now long-dead soldier's wrist. "Anthony Edward Stark." It was possible to cheat fate, that much had been known for centuries. Deliberately giving a child the name etched into the wrist of an intended match had been common practice in the upper classes in countless countries. This, what he was going to do, wasn't something he'd ever heard of anyone attempting, but there was no reason to think it wouldn't work. Being tied to someone who died twenty-five years before you were born was the closest anyone could come to not having a soulmate at all.

Maria was still talking, but Howard was no longer listening. They both knew he'd get his way in the end.

When Tony was two and the name appeared on his wrist, it was already faded a dimmer grey than even the letters Howard carried himself. A few months later, it was already painfully obvious that something was wrong with the boy. He was flighty and manic, prone to extreme heights followed by extreme lows, utterly incapable of self regulation, always unanchored. The basic knowledge of social skills that children were normally born with, Tony lacked so utterly it was painful to watch him. He had spells, usually no more than a day or two at a time, completely unpredictable, when he went from manic to hysterical, crying and screaming until he wore himself into a restless slumber. And Howard couldn't stand to be around him, couldn't stand to look at him and see how utterly his plan had backfired, and, eventually, he just couldn't stand Tony.

***

Tony wasn't certain at what age it had become obvious to him that he wasn't normal. It wasn't just that his mind worked at the speed of sound, or that he was very rarely not the smartest person in the room. It was the distance, the constant distance between himself and everyone else, as if the tethers that should've tied him to humanity had been cut. He understood machines, always had, but human beings would never not be a mystery to him. It took another few years before he began to get an inkling why, before he realized that he was missing something, something essential, something that should've always been there, making him fully human, fully in touch with the world around him. It was missing and he knew, even when he was in his twenties and began his search, that he wasn't going to find it.

James Buchanan Barnes wasn't the most common name, but it sure as fuck wasn't uncommon either, and it took years for Tony to find them all, to verify that none of them carried his name on their wrist (though a couple of them tried to pretend, almost literal dollar-signs in their eyes). And then, when he was damn near certain there were no more James Buchanan Barnes-es, or however the fuck you constructed a plural out of that. Anyway, when he had crossed off all the options, he was back at the beginning, back at the answer he'd believed in so instinctively throughout his whole childhood.

He returned to the mansion on 5th Avenue, broke into Howard's office (at least the man himself wasn't around to cuff him over the head for doing something like that anymore) and found the old newsreels. He watched them over and over, focusing on every single glance he could get at Bucky Barnes's wrist. The video quality wasn't good enough to spell it out for him, but it gave him enough. The words on Barnes's wrist were about fifteen letters long, three separate names, beginning with Ant and ending on rk. The first letter of the middle name was an E. And either way, even at a distance, Tony would've recognized his own sloppy handwriting anywhere. A sort of distant panic shook him for a moment, distant because he had always known, had always been separated, apart, had been frightened and alone and half-panicked for as long as he could remember. He pulled himself together. So, his soulmate had died twenty-five years before Tony had been born. That... That explained a hell of a lot.

It took another few minutes before Tony remembered that Howard had been there, in the War. Howard had worked with the Howling Commandos, had known them, had called them his friends. There was no way he hadn't known what name was on Bucky Barnes's wrist. And he'd given that same exact name to his own child anyway. Tony swallowed, then pushed away the sense of betrayal. Wasn't like he'd ever expected anything else from Howard anyway.

On his way to the airport and the jet waiting to take him back to Malibu, Tony stopped at one of the street vendors and bought a simple leather cuff to wrap around his wrist. These days, plenty of people had made it a mission, a movement, to work against fate. No one would be surprised if the always eccentric Tony Stark was one of them. From that day on, when anyone asked, he calmly informed them that he had no soulmate. Let them make what they would of that.

***

Pepper had never made it a secret that she would one day leave him for her soulmate. Tony didn't blame her. He knew what he was, knew that even now, after Afghanistan, even as he was trying to be a better man, he was reckless and distant and inattentive, unable to understand most emotions and most human behavior. He'd been born with half a soul, after all, enough to function, enough to exist, but not enough to connect. He still remembered his mother's words when he'd been five years old, thrashing and screaming in her lap as that old inexplicable terror gut-wrenching near-madness took him over. 'You're all heart and no soul, m'hijo', she'd whispered, and she'd sounded devastated but also a little frightened, a little disgusted. One of his tutors had once told him that the other half of his soul must be reaching out of hell to possess him for him to be acting the way he was. As much as it'd made Tony scream and rage at him, punch him with tiny fists and batter him with sharp words, he'd known he was right, because that's what he felt. On those few, terrible days when the constantly grasping bonds of his soul found something to connect to, darkness and fury and terror overcame him, pushed him into gasping panic attacks and epilepsy-like fits that left him drained and wrecked for days.

Either way, it was a wonder Pepper was willing to put up with him at all, even on a temporary basis, far more than he could've hoped for. She was the wrong shape to fill the hole deep within the core of him, but she did more to soothe the aches than any number of meaningless sexcapades, any number of numbing drugs or attempts at soothing himself through the always-there ache with alcohol and creating binges.

He wondered if it'd been like this for Barnes as well, if he'd lived this same kind of half-life, if he'd ever wondered whether it would be easier to have no soul than half of one, but he knew that wasn't how it worked. He didn't understand all the metaphysics of it, mostly because a lot of it didn't make a whole lot of logical sense, but he did know that for the older soulmate, there were no real unpleasant side effects in the months or years before the younger was born. Something about the other soul half existing on some level of potential reality, always there to reach for and grasp through some strange mechanics that constantly evaded Tony. Either way, unborn was apparently better than dead. Fuck if Tony got the whole thing. Maybe he didn't have enough soul.

Anyway, _anyway_ , he'd always known Pepper was going to leave him, but somehow that didn't make him one bit more prepared for it when she told him with gentle words, barely a week after the Expo disaster, that they were over, that she'd finally found her. And Tony remembered the words he'd seen on her wrists so many times that they barely registered as names to him anymore. _Natalia Romanova_. Natalie Rushman, Natasha Romanoff, whatever her damn name actually was, and he should've seen this coming, should've realized it the moment Fury gave away her real identity. He just nodded, keeping his anger tucked firmly beneath his resignation. Of course it was over, it was always going to be. The only chance he'd have at forever was with someone like him, and no one like him existed in the whole damn world. Even that one time he'd tried to date that one guy whose soulmate had died at the age of five, there'd been too much grief and too deep a connection to the rest of the world and not enough to him for Tony to have a hope in hell of working through it. He didn't begrudge Pepper and... whatever her name was. If he'd had that same chance, he'd have taken it in a second, had been desperate for it his whole life, probably a lot more than anyone with an actual living soulmate could even comprehend.

It was then, when Pepper left (even if she remained his friend) that he resigned himself to the fact that he was always going to be alone, that the gaping, aching wound on his soul was never going to close, that this was just the way things were. He resigned himself, accepted it, and got on with life as best as he could. Who the hell needed a soulmate anyway?

***

As Tony plummeted, half-unconscious, back towards the wormhole, he remembered that theory he'd read when he'd become aware of Jane Foster's work during some Wikipedia binge or other. Some soft-science soulmate experts had decided to dig into the Einstein-Rosen bridge theory, had warped quantum mechanics and generally accepted astrophysical theory to claim that it was impossible to get lost in the space-time continuum, or some such shit. Reed had been involved as well, he was pretty sure. Was impossible to keep the asshole away from anything to do with portals of any kind, and he hadn't stopped crowing about soulmates since he'd married poor Sue. Either way, the idea was that every person had a worldly anchor in the form of their soulmate, so any occurrence of an Einstein-Rosen bridge would open up, not to some random destination in space or time, but to the time and place where the traveler's soulmate was at his or her theoretical height, most magnetic, most radiant, most _themself_ , or something. Again, maybe Tony just didn't have enough soul to get it.

Even so, a strange sort of disjointed hope shot through him as he watched the wormhole come closer, as the explosion of the Chitauri ship kept pushing him in exactly the right direction. If those sentimental bastards were right-- He shook his head in the suit, took another tiny breath of his scant air supply. He was getting lightheaded, damn close to fainting, but even so he shouldn't be wishing for this. He had no business in the 1940's. Even 2012 was barely ready for him, for all that it'd had ages to get used to him. The forties would stifle him, snuff him out, put him in jail and throw away the key, or something. Still, as the portal got closer, he felt an odd sort of tugging sensation, something that made the hole in his soul ache unbearably for long moments. Then he fell through the portal, and for the first time in his life, just before he passed out, he felt calm, felt at peace, didn't feel panicked or desperate. The bonds of his soul reached out, and for the first time in his life, something other than hell answered. He fell into the dark of unconsciousness with a smile on his face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, anyone who's confused or concerned about this series should go read the series description and notes, just saying. And in case you're too lazy for that, this story takes place in a whole different universe from 914, so barely anything crosses over, rules or tropes or anything. This is a different story, about as loosely connected as two stories can be. Hope you enjoy it anyway. Also, the Tony/Steve thing is far from instantaneous, so if that's what you're here for, please give it a few more chapters. It'll be far beyond periphery by the time it does show up, that much I promise.

The one thing none of the veterans from the first Great War ever told him in all of their stories is that for all the horror of it, for the deaths and the stench and the horrible sounds of battle, most of the time it's boring. It's waiting and waiting and waiting until, by the time you're called into action, you're bleary-eyed and slow and aching with the lack of motion. Doubly so, if you're a sniper. Which is why Bucky does his best to insert himself into whatever covert ops the 107th takes part in right from the get-go. It helps him, of course, that his CO's know he's a rare type A delayed. With his soulmate not even born yet, he's theoretically unkillable, which makes it easier to land the dangerous jobs, especially after the 107th begin liaising with the SSR. Which is why he is currently bored all over again without even the card games and rowdy jokes that keep him entertained back in camp. He lets out a long breath, shifts from where he is sitting against the wall. He's in a hayloft in an abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere, Northern Italy, waiting for a contact who won't be showing up until sometime tomorrow. Clearly, there is such a thing as making too good time.

He sighs, opens his pack and pulls out a worn paperback that's made the rounds throughout half the company already. The back cover has fallen off and the front is so worn he can barely make out the title. Doesn't matter right now. He just needs something, anything, to help him pass the time. He opens the weathered book, keeping half his attention still on his surroundings, and lets himself descend into the action of the novel.

The language is kind of dense and posh and very British, and it's all going a lot slower than Bucky prefers, but it's not like he can hop down to the corner bookstore and buy any dime novel that looks good, or get his hands on the newest zines. He doesn't really have much choice but to get by on what's at hand, so he keeps at it, dips into his rations when he gets hungry, and eventually adds another dog-ear to the abused book before settling down for the night when there's no more natural light to read by.

It can't possibly have been more than an hour or two when he wakes back up. It's nothing more than the faintest sound that does it. Footsteps, where there shouldn't be footsteps, and Bucky has been doing this long enough now, has been in the European theater and in the War long enough, that he's awake in a second. It could be nothing. It could be his contact being early, just like he is himself. It could be fatal. Quiet as he can possibly be, he rolls onto his stomach and crabs his way to the broken board he spied earlier. On the way, he picks up his rifle, already assembled, and checks that his pistol is in its holster at his hip.

He reaches the broken board at long fucking last, presses close and gets the Springfield into position. He stretches out, gets his eye through the scope. The darkness makes everything more difficult, but sleeping in it has made him somewhat better capable of working through it. It takes a moment before he finds the disturbance, and then he tenses up. There are two men down there, when there should only be one. One is dressed in the worn, patched garb that is common for all the resistance fighters Bucky has met. The other, however, is crisp and tall and blond, uniformed in something that far too closely resembles a German uniform. Forcibly, Bucky keeps himself from tensing in any way they can possibly pick up. Strains his ears, tries to figure out what's going on even as the last bit of sleep fog leaves his mind.

"Wird er Morgen hier sein?" the uniformed one asks, and Bucky has to force himself, once again, to not tense up from this whole thing.

"Ja," the other one says. "Ja, versprochen."

Bucky still doesn't know as much German as he'd prefer - well, really he'd prefer not having to know it at all, but as things are, he'd like nothing more than to be fluent - but he knows enough to know it's ominous and that they're talking about him.

"Das Treffen ist geplannt für morgen 8.00 Uhr. Du mußt einfach nur deine Leute verstecken und dann könnt ihr ihn leicht schnappen." The shabby looking one is too straight-backed and too fucking desperate and Bucky wants to rip him head to toe because he knows, fucking _knows_ , that he is being sold out even as he watches.

It doesn't make sense. The Italian Resistance needs the American Army more than they need anything. The States supply them with weapons and explosives and even, whenever it's possible, food and other necessities. Their working relationship fucking works, which is why the army is relying so heavily on the info the Resistance provides of Hitler and Mussolini and movements and strategies and the state of their alliance. But if the Resistance is a dud... Bucky doesn't even want to think about what that might mean. He shifts his aim on the rifle, takes off the safety and squeezes his finger ever so carefully around the trigger. Doesn't shoot, though. His first mission is information gathering, and he doesn't intend to miss anything. He might not have a perfect memory or a perfect understanding of German, but holding off might still buy him something to take back, although what's already there is easily enough to trigger all the alarms already.

"Weiß er irgendwas wichtiges??" the uniformed one asks, and this one Bucky understands at least. It's all he can do not to snort under his breath. What kind of fish is it they think they're going to catch anyway? Bucky is a sergeant, barely an officer at all, and he sure as fuck ain't got any secrets to share. He's a damn good sniper, but since he ain't ever going to shoot for them, that doesn't really make any kind of difference. Something is going on here, something big enough that apparently they think the SSR would've sent someone more important, but all that's here is Bucky. He can't help but think that he can easily turn that into a hell of an advantage.

Another "Ja, ja," and that supposed resistance fighter has a look that reminds Bucky of nothing so much as an eager dog. He raises his arm in the stiff salute. "Hail," he says, but it's not 'Hitler' he uses to end his salute. It's "HYDRA," and that, Bucky can't help but think, is more important to bring home than anything else.

The conversation appears to be over, and Bucky tightens his finger, taking careful aim. He doesn't want to have to take more than two shots to get these assholes, and the tiny gap the broken board affords him provides a terrible angle, but he can do this. He _has_ to. Whatever these crazy bastards are up to, it's clearly nothing good and as much as Bucky would usually applaud that, it's no good around here.

He shifts positions again, bringing the rifle up to a better angle, squints into the sights until he's got the German officer in the crosshairs. He tightens his finger on the trigger, gets ready to shoot, and fuck, he still hates this part. He knows it's necessary, knows it's for the greater good, that someone has to do it and that he's damn good at it, but he still threw up the first time he shot someone's brains out, however fucking embarrassing that memory is. He's shooting bullies, he reminds himself, bringing Steve's thin, fierce face and fiercer anger to mind. Poland, he reminds himself. Austria. Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, France. So many countries unwillingly or helplessly under German control, and Steve fucking Rogers has spent their whole lives conditioning him to resent that in the worst possible way. Even so, that's not what makes his finger tighten on the trigger, the German officer still straight in his crosshairs.

What does make everything in his body tighten against his own will is the sudden sensation of fulfillment. He doesn't know what the hell else he's supposed to call it. Bucky Barnes has lived his whole life with the promise of a soulmate but never with the presence of one. The distance he's felt as long as he remembers is more than that of someone who has never met the other half of his soul, it's that of someone who only has a half soul born yet. Sure, he's better off than those poor damn Type C's whose soulmates have died before they meet, let alone the Type D's, who've met and then been torn apart, but there's still something so distant, so unreal, about reaching out and feeling something as innocent and effervescent and unreal as an unborn half-soul reaching back, and as great as that might be for a child, it is utterly unfulfilling for a grown man.

When Bucky was five, he was still a fairly normal Type A. Five years wasn't much of an age difference. His pa was almost fifteen years older than his ma, and they worked great together. When he was ten, he was more unusual but still not disturbing. He'd met Steve by then, and they'd bonded over a few dozen different things. One of them was the names on their wrists. They'd honed in on the shared 'Stark', fantasized that their soulmates were brothers, that one day they'd all get a house together, that they'd each marry their soulmate and raise their kids as siblings somewhere in the countryside. 

When he was fifteen, he was painfully aware of the fact that he was early, or his soulmate was late. He wasn't just a Type A anymore, he was a Type A delayed, the kind of guy who'd be long grown by the time his soulmate could even grow facial hair, the kind who'd be long grey before his children reached their teens. And he and Steve had to come to terms with the fact that Howard and Anthony couldn't be brothers. The age difference was getting too big. Besides, it wasn't as though Stark was that uncommon a name. They were from Brooklyn. They knew a small handful of families called either Stark or Starke or something like it (although they were all suddenly, amazingly, 'Stark' with a British background by the time the War hit).

By the time he was twenty, Bucky was an abnormality, close to a physical impossibility. He would be old enough to be his soulmate's father, and if that wasn't a disturbing thing all of its own, he didn't know what was. Sure, some soulmates were purely platonic. Nearly all twins were born soulmates, after all, and for all the dirty stories he heard, he preferred the idea that that meant it was more than possible to be platonic. Still, it was uncomfortable to know that he was a grown man providing for himself, trying to take care of Steve too, whenever Steve let him, and that the other half of his soul wasn't even in diapers yet. Sure, there was a strange comfort in the light and innocence that always accompanied reaching out to and grasping someone in the realm of the unborn, but Bucky was old enough that he'd have preferred something a lot more tangible.

He went for every dame and fella who'd have him. Even if his soulmate was born tomorrow, he'd have an eighteen year wait, and he was not going to stay chaste that damn long. Clearly, other people out there thought the same way. They weren't all Type A either. Some were simply realists. They weren't rich people, in his neighborhood, and it took wealth and determination for most people to find their soulmate, even if they didn't have the curse of the unborn resting over their heads.

He also began to ask questions, more than he always had. He asked his ma, his pa, Steve, Mrs. O'Donnell down the hall, _everyone_ , wanted to be sure he wasn't missing something, wasn't just confusing the whole thing. But everything they said just confirmed his position. They felt _emotions_ , even when they were only faint echoes, felt tugs and pulls and humors and sorrows, nothing like the utter, distant serenity that was all Bucky seemed to ever grasp.

Bucky's twenty-six now, will be way too old for his soulmate, but that doesn't seem to matter one bit when he feels the other half of his soul take their first breath of the same air Bucky breathes. It feel like he's expanding, spreading out, growing larger, fuller, like he's more complete, somehow. He sucks a sharp breath in through his nose, and fuck, how does everyone live with this every day? A living, breathing soulmate is a hell of a distraction, one Bucky sure as fuck doesn't need right now, even if the sensations are welcome, so fucking welcome his chest seems to expand and his heart picks up double speed before slowing down to something so slow and calming it's almost disconcerting. His soulmate's heartbeat.

His finger squeezes mostly out of shock, and the uniformed man drops without a word. Bucky quickly shifts the rifle so he can take out the fake resistance fighter as well, and he realizes he's moving a hell of a lot faster than he should. Or else his heartbeat is too slow. He's moving fast through a world that's in slow motion, and his throat feels suddenly tight. It's difficult to breathe, so damn difficult. He squeezes the trigger again, and the resistance fighter falls down too, a perfect hole right between his eyebrows, and just a few months ago that would've made Bucky sick as a dog. Right now, he can't feel anything but the utter, incredible completion that's nothing like he ever even imagined. He's twenty-six. That means that by the time his soulmate's eighteen, he'll be forty-four. It's a hell of an age-difference, more than Bucky would've preferred. But it's not impossible. His kids will have barely reached adulthood when he's taken by old age, and that's if he survives the War, but... But. There's a fire behind this other half of his soul. He feels it the moment it enters the world. A fire that's slightly similar to his own, so different to Steve's even though Steve's the fieriest person he knows. This fire burns hotter than anything he's encountered, but at the same time it's softer, malleable, more like a he imagines a blacksmith's forge back in that damn book than the kind of wildfire Steve's got him used to putting out. It's reassuring, and it straightens his back like nothing else could've done. He's breathed the same air as his soulmate now. He's no longer unkillable, but he's still a damn good soldier, a damn good sniper, and he's going to stay the hell alive, because he's damn well met people whose soulmates died when they were infants, and that is not something he wants to put his... his special someone through.

It takes several long moments before he realizes that the two men he spotted aren't the only ones here. Mostly, it takes a damn bullet nearly hitting his damn head, and he blames his distraction for not hearing the fucking Nazi pests sneak up on him.

A second bullet rips through the air, and Bucky throws himself to the side, gasping in a breath as another bullet whizzes just past him. He drops the rifle and goes for the pistol at his hip, bringing it up even as he takes a moment to squint into the darkness. Just when he thinks he's got the layout of the barn down all over again, someone lights a match and he's momentarily blinded. He blinks, and all he sees is displaced color and shadow and fuck, this is not how it's supposed to end. Bucky isn't supposed to be one of those cliché tragic Type A's who only get a few shared breaths before blinking out, who only ever get potential and nothing real. He isn't supposed to go down like this, a victim of a Goddamn candle. He shoots blindly, misses. Jumps out of the return fire and dodges behind a moldy old stack of hay. A bullet tears right through it, barely missing his shoulder.

He sucks in a deep breath, steels himself and then rolls out from behind his cover, doing his very damn best to take in the location of his targets and shoot them all at once, but something about tonight has him utterly off his game. He's slow, his reactions soft and fuzzy like old Mrs. Marlow's homebrew. His head is full of his soulmate, his mind screaming that name over and over again. AnthonyEdwardStarkAnthonyEdwardStarkAnthonyEdwardStarkAnthonyAnthonyAnthonyAnthony. The name has been seared into his left wrist for as long as he can remember and now, at fucking last, it might be real, and he can't fucking focus and fuck, there are at least three enemy combatants in here and what the fuck is he--

There's a sudden crash, something like thunder, and then something heavy and impossible crashes through the roof of the building, taking the first two combatants with it, and then through the hayloft floor, and then, probably, a whole helluva lot deeper. Part of Bucky is just as shocked as his opponents, but part of him is suddenly more alert than he's ever been, and however odd and impossible he knows that impact was, it doesn't seem to affect him the same way it does everyone else. He simply keeps his hand steady on the gun and shoots them all the fuck down. Then he walks to the edge of the hole in the floor, jumps down and inspects the crater.

The hole at the bottom is vaguely man-shaped, and in the middle something blinks red and gold, and Bucky's breath catches. He cannot explain it for the life of him, but he needs to get down there right the fuck now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Needed to write something quicker and easier than 914, just to get myself out of that headspace for a bit. As a general bit of info, I'll reiterate that series info is under the series link. 
> 
> I do know my history, and that includes WWII history, but I know it from a European standpoint and more specifically from a Danish standpoint, which means the history I know is all about politics and sabotage and underground fighting (whatever our official status, there's a reason we were recognised as part of the Allied Forces after the fact - mostly the reason was our aptitude for blowing things sky high). What this means is that I actually know very little of the American side of the war, how the army worked and what soldiers actually did when they weren't fighting. And that's without adding in the US fucking military, which I do not know the first thing about outside of movies. Anyone with a background in American military history ever wants to correct me, please do so, because I have no clue and I did not have the energy to spend days or weeks reading up on a side of the war that never played directly into my history in the first place. Don't get that wrong. I respect everything America did way back then, but I know next to nothing about it, and I'd rather be writing than spending ages of research on it. Sorry. I'll try to eventually make up for it in the manner of a Scandinavian who knows Norse Mythology. Or something.
> 
> Also, I knew German once upon a time. Studied it for six fucking years in school. Then I had a stint of living in a Spanish-spaking country, and apparently my brain is only capable of holding a limited amount of languages at any one time. Spanish edged out German. I'm sorry to anyone who knows what those sentences should actually be. Google translate is no one and everyone's friend. Please correct me in all the places I went wrong.  
> ETA: Thank you so much to evilwitch66 for the corrections. Hopefully this now makes sense to native German-speakers as well.
> 
> The chapters of this one are going to be shorter and of a less regular length than those of 914. This works with a different trope entirely, and the style/tense are different too. Enjoying one doesn't mean you have to enjoy the other. Still, I liked wriing this, and I hope you enjoyed it too. Thanks so much for all the kudos, subscriptions and bookmarks, let alone the comments. All of those made my day.
> 
> 914 will be updated on the next weekend at the latest, for those of you who are only here for a bit of a tide-over.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry getting this up took as long as it did, but I had to stop, take a breath, and work out the direction I wanted to take this in. With a lot of help from the lovely Potrix, I did get it to make sense in my own head, so chapters should come somewhat more quickly from now on.
> 
> Trigger warning on these next few chapters: They contain obvious (though viewed from the outside) mental trauma and different physical manifestations of a mental disorder that doesn't exist in our known universe, including catatonia and seizures.
> 
> (And yes, I re-ordered the order of the pairings, because at this point in time I have no specific plan to write the 1940s part of the story, which means that the primary romantic focus of the story, at least for now, is Steve/Tony. ETA: I tried to re-order, but apparently that's not a thing you can do.)

Steve hasn't actually been to that many funerals in his life. In the War, the only Howling Commando who fell before him was Bucky, and then there wasn't time for anything beyond a failed attempt at getting drunk before Steve was crashing the plane into the ocean. There were some people from the neighborhood as he grew up, nothing he really remembers very clearly. There was his ma, which is the only one that's really stood out to him before, the only one that's stuck with him. This one is horrible in a whole different way.

The guilt is a tangible, cold weight in the pit of his stomach, because this is a teammate, someone Steve was supposed to direct and protect, who still ended up dying on the mission. More than that, the man being buried is someone Steve saw as a bully, as a greedy, conceited man who was only in it for the glory. And then he went and made the sacrifice play and made Steve wrong in every single way.

And he was Howard's son. Steve might not have met Howard until after the Serum had knitted up the holes in his soul and eliminated the need for a soulmate. There had never been anything romantic there, not from Steve's end anyway, but Howard had been a good friend. Steve had cared about him deeply. And Tony was Howard's son. Steve is the asshole who's gotten him killed.

Steve keeps his shoulders squared, keeps his back straight. He's wearing whatever passes for a dress uniform these days. The sun is out and shining brightly, making him sweat under his clothes. It feels like a subtle insult towards a man so much braver than Steve ever gave him credit for. He takes a deep breath, looks out over the people gathered around the empty casket. There are ostentatiously well-dressed business-people types, whose emotions are so clearly fake it grinds at Steve's temper. Some fans have made it in as well, and while their emotions are over the top for people who never really knew Tony Stark, Steve can't blame them. He didn't know Tony Stark either, not even a little bit. Still, their exaggerated sorrow is grating.

And then there are the people who actually know. Banner is hunched all in on himself again, looking like a man who was offered relief only to have it ripped away within seconds. Romanoff is wrapped almost full-body around her dame, who's clinging and sobbing and shaking all over, no composure left whatsoever. Colonel Rhodes is standing by them, one hand on Pott's shoulder. He's standing tall, stoic, but his eyes look utterly lost, look exactly the way Steve felt when he watched Bucky fall. Steve grits his teeth, sets his jaw, forces himself to watch as the empty casket is lowered into the ground, to listen as the priest waxes philosophical, and he can't believe he's seventy years in the future and the most significant thing he's managed to do is get Howard's boy killed.

***

It's been two months since the battle of Manhattan when Romanoff calls him. "You need to come to the Tower right now," she says. "Stark's alive."

Steve blinks, frowns, but Romanoff's already hung up. The words rattle around in his head. _Stark's alive. Stark's alive. Stark'salivealivealive._ For two months he's been in this funk, holed back up in his apartment, going down the street to the gym there to pound out his energy against half a dozen heavy bags. And now, suddenly, something is piercing through. There's some level of motivation here. Before he's even made a conscious decision, he's pulling on his bomber jacket and heading for his bike.

The elevator takes him towards the penthouse level without needing so much as a word of instruction, and Steve's pretty sure that won't ever not be weird. Right now, though, he's too darn wired to spare more than half a thought on it. At long last, the elevator comes to a stop and the doors part. Steve catches himself before he stumbles, manages to step out with some measure of dignity.

Romanoff meets him halfway into the room. "Another portal opened," she says. "Stark fell out. He's in a bad way, but he is alive. Pepper and Banner are with him."

Steve nods, swallows. "Can I see him?" he asks, and he doesn't know how he went from hating the man to this, this need to be absolutely certain he's still breathing, still has a pulse. Well, he supposes. Being proven utterly wrong might've played a part. As may the fact that Tony's Howard's son, the closest thing Steve's got to family in this new, confusing world.

Romanoff nods. "This way," she says, and walks down a hallway. She stops at the last door and waves him through, and there's Potts on a chair, hunched over, knuckles pressed against her mouth. Banners working some kind of tube or machinery into Stark's body. And there's Stark. He isn't prone at all, the way someone unconscious would normally be. Rather, he's curled up around himself, knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped tight around them. His whole body is shaking and he's white as a fresh washed sheet, dark hair soaked through with sweat.

"What's happening?" Steve asks.

Banner spares him a quick glance. "I don't know," he admits. "I think he's in shock. He's showing all the known symptoms of acute bond loss, which makes no sense. According to absolutely everyone, Tony never had a bondmate."

Steve winces. He's seen bond loss before, seen it bring strong men and women straight to their knees, cripple them, leave them broken for the rest of their, usually, short lives.

Romanoff huffs and steps into the room. "That's a lie," she says, but Steve doesn't think she's accusing Banner of lying so much as she's accusing Stark. "He might never have had a normal bond, but..." She steps right up next to the bed, forcibly uncurls Stark's left arm and pulls down the bracelet there. Steve can't read what it says from this distance, but something's definitely there. "...he does have a soulmate. Sort of."

Banner glances at the name etched into Stark's wrist, starts visibly. "That's not possible," he says. "That's not-- The timelines don't mix up at all. That doesn't make sense no matter how you turn it." He pauses, swallows audibly. "Howard Stark had to have known. He wouldn't have done something like this. No one would do that to their own child."

And somehow, without ever seeing the name, Steve is half certain he knows what the mark says. "Anthony Stark," he mutters, feeling gutted, suddenly cold through and through with fear. "Does he have a middle name?"

"Edward," Romanoff says without hesitation.

Steve staggers for a moment, has to grip the wall to hold himself up. "Anthony Edward Stark," he says, and he knows that name so well, has known it for as long as he can remember, for as long as he's known Bucky. Anthony Edward Stark, good God, what the heck has Howard done? And how has Steve not made the connection before now? He stumbles forward, has to see, has to be sure, because, fuck, Howard can't possibly have done this, can he? Except Steve sees Stark's wrist, and yeah, Howard did do that. Steve's legs give out of him and he falls into the nearest chair, arms wrapping around himself.

"What are you thinking, Banner?" Romanoff asks.

"That this is not possible," Banner says. "But also that it would maybe explain some of his... eccentricities. Spending your whole life reaching out for someone who's just not there... It's a wonder he's lived this long."

"James Buchanan Barnes," Romanoff reads. "Cap?"

Steve nods, half dazed. "Bucky's said Anthony Edward Stark," he informs, voice coming out strangled and wrong. "I can't believe..." And then he trails off, because he kind of can. He remembers the desperation in Howard's eyes, remembers his own sadness, his own desire to make it better, coupled with the inability to do so. Howard could've done this, for what he thought were all the right reasons. Steve can practically picture it. He just can't believe anyone, let alone someone who was once his soulmate, could possibly be so thoughtless. And yet, this just ties him all the more tightly to Stark, to _Tony_ , who's Howard's son and Bucky's soulmate, his once soulmate's son and his brother's intended. Nausea slams right into him at the thought of how he treated the other man when they first met.

"Jesus fuck," Banner mutters.

Romanoff lets out a long string of swears in Russian, and then Tony's going off, coming out of his fetal position to scream and writhe and thrash, and by the time Banner restrains his flailing limbs and puts something in his mouth to keep him from swallowing his own tongue, Steve slinks out of the room, feeling sicker than he has since long before the serum.

***

He's not sure how long he's been sitting on the edge of the couch, stiff and unmoving, probably in some kind of shock himself. The same nonsensical thoughts keep running through his head. Him and Bucky fantasizing about their soulmates when they were both still little and male soulmates were the kind of taboo they didn't care about one bit, at least not when it was just the two of them. Bucky's gritted teeth and desperate eyes when he was twenty years old, twenty-five, and his soulmate was still unborn. None of this makes sense. Soulmates can be born years apart, or on the same day. They can be born right next to each other or on opposite sides of the world. But never in his life has he heard of a pair who didn't both get to draw at least one breath while they were both alive. Light and shadow move across him, lighting and darkening the room in turns, and if he were feeling even a bit like himself, he'd be itching for a sketchpad to draw out the incredible view beyond the wall-length windows. At it is, he barely notices anything beyond the questions and memories swirling through his own mind.

It must be hours later when Banner plops down next to him, visibly shaken, wide-eyed with exhaustion. "He's stable," he says. "For now. Hasn't had a seizure in an hour. He's completely catatonic, but at least that's better than..." He reached up, rubs a hand against his face. "I gave him anti-convulsive medication," he says. "I don't even know why he had the seizures. There's no evidence of epilepsy, but Ms. Potts says he's had them for as long as she's known him. Nothing this bad, though. And he's cold as ice. We had to bring up the temperature. It's like a sauna in there. I don't understand any of this. Shit."

Steve bites his lip, doesn't lift his head from where it's resting in the palms of his hands. His elbows are propped up on his knees. "Bucky died in nineteen-forty-five," he says. "They never met. They never had a _chance_ to meet. Why is he suffering bond loss?"

Banner shakes his head, lets out a long, deep sigh. "I don't know," he says. "I have no idea. I wish I did, don't get me wrong. I just-- There's no case to compare this to. I have never in my life heard of anyone who was born more than twenty-five years after their soulmate's death. It's not supposed to be possible."

Steve snorted. "Trust Howard to do the impossible," he muttered, and fuck, as much as he once cared about Howard, right now he kind of wants to go back in time just to punch him in the face. He swallows painfully. "I can kind of see it," he says then. "I didn't want to, on the helicarrier. I hated how much he reminded me of Bucky. Bucky and Howard both. I was... I treated him like garbage. But I could see it even then."

Banner sighs. "That's the whole point of it, isn't it? Cut from the same cloth. Two literal pieces of the same whole." He doesn't speak for a long stretch of time.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. "Which means I was cut from the same cloth as the man who caused this," he says.

"That's not what I meant, Cap," Banner says. "I--"

"I know," Steve says. "And I know I'm all me now, one whole soul all to myself. But there is a part of me, or there once was, that was capable of this."

"You didn't cause this," Banner says.

Steve's not so sure about that. "How can we help him?" he asks at last, forcing himself to raise his head and pull himself together. Yes, it's a horrible situation, but that just means he needs to figure out some way to help. That broken man in there is the only family, as distant and relative as even that might be, that he's got on Earth in this century. And beyond that, this is his team. He's supposed to lead them, to take care of them, not just be vaguely aware of the fact that Pepper Potts, Romanoff's dame, has inherited Stark Industries and that she's moved Romanoff, Banner and Barton into the Tower. Being a leader is more than knowing how many teammates he's got at his immediate disposal.

"Nat's trying to lure Ms. Potts out of there," Banner says. "Maybe it would make her job easier if you'd sit with him for a bit. You're strong enough to restrain him if there's another seizure."

"Why's he having those anyway?" Steve asks, even as he pushes himself to his feet. "Never knew that was part of bond loss. And I've seen a fair few cases in my time."

Banner shrugs. "We can only guess, since Tony's the only known case in the world. My theory is that it's a side effect of reaching continuously for something that's not there."

"Wouldn't it be a normal part of bond loss then?" Steve asks.

"I don't know." Banner sounds utterly miserable. "Haven't fleshed the theory out yet. We don't have anything to compare it with. Who knows what being born with bond loss can do to a person? Even though they never met, it doesn't mean Tony's soul isn't searching, but unlike everyone else in the whole damn world, he's never managed for even a second to grab hold of anything."

Steve swallows, tries to imagine that. And he can't, not really. His whole life, whenever he subconsciously reached for his soulmate, there'd always been an answer, always been that reassuring sense of connection, of being part of a greater whole, part of the world, part of another person. Even after the Serum, well, even as part of him has tried, subconsciously, to reach out, it hasn't made much of a difference. His soul is whole now. There are no fractured ends that can reach out. All he finds when he tries is himself, and while that is lonely, it's also oddly reassuring. He can't imagine being able to reach out and finding _nothing_. "Where's he been?" he asks. "Romanoff said he fell back through a portal. How did that--"

Banner shrugs again. "We don't know. There are some theories, but the only half-way serious scientist involved is Foster, and even she's a sweet young romantic. I can't tell you what the hell is going on. Right now, it doesn't matter. What matters is Tony."

Steve nods, agreeing immediately. "I'll sit with him," he promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for all the kudos, bookmarks and subscriptions, and especially the comments. So very appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Making an attempt at researching Bucky's sisters kind of made me pull up short. Apparently, Bucky might very well only have one canonical sister, Rebecca, and the other two are fanon. Even if they aren't, I definitely couldn't find any names. Either way, I decided to go with the three younger sisters approach, and aside from Rebecca, there's a Charlotte (I am pretty sure I've seen that name used in several other stories) and one who has yet to receive a name. If anyone has any additional information on that count, please feel free to share and bring me out of my state of confusion.
> 
> Also, I've now written this chapter twice. I wrote two chapters ahead on this story, then apparently managed to overwrite everything with an old version that only had the first two chapters. Annoying as all hell. Not sure whether it's a good thing or not that those lost two chapters are now turning into three chapters in the new version. Probably just means that whatever projected wordcount I may or may not have rambled about... Probably won't hold. Eh, not a secret that I don't know how to write short to save my life.

It takes several long moments for Steve to steel himself before entering the sickroom again. He stops just inside the door, tries to breathe through the guilt pressing down on him. So many things to feel guilty about: what he, however indirectly, made Howard do, how he has treated Tony thus far, his inability to protect a teammate who was ultimately, in the heat of the battle, his responsibility. Finally, he makes himself look up and face the slender form on the bed. Tony is sitting, propped up by a dozen pillows, blankets pulled up to his chin. Catatonic doesn't even seem to be enough of a word to cover his state. He looks impossibly small on the bed, and Steve has to blink at that, because never once on the helicarrier did he realize that Tony was shorter than him. If anything, Tony made him feel as small as he had been before the Serum, dwarfing him with a sheer, enormous presence that made Steve rear up and try to regain his own footing. Without that presence, he is suddenly a slender man with cheeks that show sign of a recent sparse diet, barely five foot eight, if that. Without the constant motion, he looks fragile, vulnerable. The worst part is his eyes. Unblinking, unmoving, and utterly absent, as though he's looking past the room, past the Tower and New York and into some other world. It's eerie.

Out of the corner of his eye, he's vaguely aware of Romanoff tugging Ms. Potts out of one of the bedside chairs, aware of the suspicious look Ms. Potts sends him before Romanoff whispers something or other in her ear and she acquiesces and lets herself be led out of the room. Slowly, Steve sinks into the abandoned chair, feeling big and bumblingly awkward and utterly useless. "So," Steve hears himself say, and he hasn't made a conscious decision to speak at all, doesn't know why he does it, except that in the heat of the room, with Tony's empty stare, the silence feels oppressive. He clears his throat, uncertain how to move onwards. "Apparently no one knows what's going on with you. I'm sure if you were awake, you could school us all, and I wouldn't have a clue what you were saying, but.." He trails off with a sigh. Maybe it's better to just keep silent. Maybe not. "I'm sorry, by the way," he says. "For the way I treated you back on the helicarrier. I don't. I honestly don't have any excuse for it. I was out of line and I was wrong, and I'm sorry."

Tony continues to sit there, unresponsive. He gives not a single sign that he's heard Steve at all, and Steve feels something inside his own chest contract. He's never reacted well to seeing other people in pain. He still remembers that once when Charlie got the flu and Bucky's parents were both working. Steve and Bucky had to babysit, and Bucky wouldn't let Steve anywhere near his feverish sister. For good reason. Steve had always had a unique ability to catch every bug going around. That hadn't stopped Steve from sitting in the next room over, listening through the thin wall as Charlie coughed and sniffled and sobbed and trying not to sob his own head off out of pure sympathy. He wants to make this better, he really does. He just doesn't have the first clue how.

Steve can't imagine what it must've been like, a whole life of reaching out and finding nothing, can't imagine the strain that must be on mind and body. Can't imagine the utter devastation Tony must've felt when he connected the dots and they led to a man who died long before he was born. Steve can't help but think that, in its own way, it must've been many times more crippling than all the health issues he grew up with himself put together and multiplied. His throat goes tight at the thought, like the asthma the Serum wiped away has made a sudden, startling return. He wants to help, so badly, but he's got nothing, nothing-- Except, that's not true, is it? He can't give Tony his brother, but he can share what few pieces of James Barnes that still exist, the ones in Steve's own memory. "Bucky was..." Steve has to stop, swallow, and this is still so darn raw it makes his eyes burn. "He was incredible. He was-- You'd have loved him, if you'd gotten to meet him. Everyone did. Don't get me wrong, he was a jerk, but the good sort. He always got us in trouble." He stops again, takes a deep breath and blinks against the stinging in his eyes. Then, steeling himself, he continues,

"Bucky's family was better off than mine," he says. "Not much, you know, especially after his sisters were all born. But he did have two parents who were both working, and they had fewer medical bills and stuff to think about. So they weren't. I mean, we must all be dirt poor to someone like you, but most weeks, they had some kind of treats, cookies or apples, lying around and waiting for special occasions. Anyway, I remember this once, Ma hadn't been getting enough shifts at the hospital, and we hadn't had that much to eat. I was constantly hungry. I must've been four or five, Bucky was probably six. He figured out something was wrong pretty fast, probably didn't help that my stomach was always growling and I was getting these dizzy spells, which, obviously, he couldn't let stand. So he took me back to their apartment. They had this high, high cabinet, and the cookie jar was at the very top. Bucky climbed all the way up, grabbed the jar and took it down, and then he gave me five potatoes. Which, you know, not that kind of potato, but-- I'll make them for you sometime, if you want. Kind of cookie. He stuck the jar in Becky's lap and pulled me right back out, and wouldn't leave me alone until I'd eaten everything. I got a stomachache like you wouldn't believe." He can feel a smile tugging at his face now, fondness muscling through the sharp, too-recent loss. "When we went back to their apartment, his ma was scratching her head, wondering how Becky had managed to get down the jar and eat half the potatoes. Of course, I got a bad conscience and went back to tell his ma and apologize a few days later. Probably cost him a bit of a spanking, that stunt. But I didn't go to bed hungry that night."

He trails off on a shuddering breath and turns his head to look at Tony again. Nothing has changed. He's still sitting in the exact same position, still staring at absolutely nothing. Steve breathes out a sigh, then pushes away the instinctive disappointment. No one's expecting him to do anything here, no one's expecting him to make a difference. All they're expecting him to do is be the human supplement to that strange omnipresent voice in the ceiling. Besides, it's not like he's been talking that long. Maybe he needs to talk more. Maybe Tony hears him. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe something is sinking in on some kind of subconscious level. It doesn't matter. He'll keep going now, and if he needs to, he'll repeat himself over and over again. He owes this to Tony. He owes this to _Bucky_. He'll see this through, do whatever he can to ease what Tony's going through in the only way he knows how.

"Bucky started school the year before I did, obviously," Steve continues. He stops to take a breath, tries to infuse a bit more confidence into his own voice. "He was more than a year older than me, after all. And he was big for his age, so when I walked in with him on my first day, no one touched me. But Bucky couldn't always be there, you know. His classes let out later, and he had classmates to play with as well, and. Anyway, when I was walking home that first day, Buck still had class, so I was on my own. I was, you know, ridiculously small. Probably looked all of four years old, at a stretch. Easy pickings. Some of the boys from my class must've wanted to establish themselves as big baddies or something. They jumped me right out of the gate, beat me black and blue. Left me there in an alley. I didn't want to go home because Ma'd worked the night shift and I didn't want to make her sad when she should be sleeping. Bucky found me there when he got out of school an hour later. Took me back to his parents' apartment and patched me up. Then he decided we were going to learn how to fight. We went down to the Y that same week, started learning. Well, Bucky learned. He was a natural. I was kind of horrible at it. Bucky ended up being city-wide amateur champion four times before he was deployed."

Steve glances at Tony again, starts. Tony's blinking, and not just the slow blinks that have been coming every so often at regular intervals, a purely physical function. This is four blinks, rapid, lashes fluttering. His head seems to have tilted as well. Not much, barely a fraction, not something Steve would've noticed, except he's been looking hard for any kind of a sign. And even as Tony stops blinking, even as his gaze goes vacant and dead again, Steve can feel the boost, the reassurance, all through his body. He lets out a long breath, feels the tiniest upwards tugging on the corners of his mouth. Maybe he really is making some kind of a difference.

"He was always strong," Steve continues. "Always big for his age. He started working on the docks when he was twelve, to help pay his family's bills. Nobody ever messed with Bucky Barnes. Smart too. He was top of his class in math and science. Spent most of whatever spending money he had on pulp and sci-fi zines, trying to dream up futures. I doubt he could've ever imagined anything like this. Then again, I doubt he'd have imagined how long he'd have had to wait for you either." He stops, swallows, because darn it all, he hates this, hates that he's here rather than Bucky, hates that he's the one having to comfort Bucky's crippled soulmate, hates that he couldn't keep Bucky alive, for Tony, for himself, for Bucky and everything he was, everything he could've accomplished. He doesn't stop to think about the age difference that would've existed if Bucky had survived, doesn't want to. It doesn't matter, he just wishes things hadn't gone like this, everything so messed up and Howard making his own boy suffer for it. Heck, he's not sure his thoughts make sense even to himself anymore. "Maybe that whole fascination with the future, with technology that didn't exist, with... Maybe it was because of you, really. Your half of the soul calling out to his somehow, even with all the decades in between. He'd have loved this Tower, loved this whole century. Would've fit right in. He'd have loved you. Would've taken you dancing, played it all cool and smooth. Would've come back to the apartment and told me how amazing he thought you were, how fun and gorgeous. You wouldn't have been able to miss it. Even when he thought he was being smooth, Bucky was pretty darn transparent."

He keeps going, doesn't even know how long. He tells Tony about helping Bucky with his English homework, Bucky helping Steve with science and math, tells Tony about the tight spots Bucky's fished him out of over the years, tells him about ridiculous double dates, about childhood pranks and shenanigans, about their time with the Howling Commandoes, memory spilling into memory, and he is pretty sure he has to stop to bite back sobs at a point or two, but it's like drawing poison out of a wound. By the time Tony's eyes slip shut and Steve slowly stops talking, he's feeling better than he has in, darn, he doesn't even know. And looking at Tony sleeping, Steve lets his own eyes slide shut as well, slumbers through the rest of the night in that strange half-asleep state of being that the army and long nights in enemy territory taught him more than half a century ago.

He comes back awake with a slight start when the door opens and Romanoff, Potts and Banner walk in. Romanoff, as the only one, looks put together and awake in functional clothes, a ponytail and her usual level of makeup. Banner looks tired, yawning and pale, as raggedy as ever. Potts, Steve can't help but think, looks the most out of character, and he honestly hasn't seen more than a few pictures of her _in_ character, but he still can't help but think that her bare feet, unkempt hair, loose clothes and red-eyed faceful of natural is something different than what she usually presents to the world. Something about that is actually reassuring. However terrible it sounds, Steve can't help but be grateful that Tony's got people who love him enough to break down when he does. Romanoff nudges him, pulls him out of the chair. Potts drops into it a moment later, taking over his place seamlessly while Romanoff all but pulls him out of the room. "How did it go?" she asks.

Steve shrugs. "I talked to him," he says. "I'm not sure how much got through, but he kind of. He turned his head toward me at some point, I think. He blinked a lot." He shrugs again. "I don't know."

She tilts her head ever so slightly to the side. "You got a reaction out of him, you did better than any of the rest of us have," she says. "Might not feel like much, but it could be a really good sign."

Steve lets the barest hint of a smile through on his face. It's as much as he can do. It feels like his facial muscles have been pulled tight. "I just told him about Bucky," he says.

Romanoff nods. "That's the thing you can do and none of the rest of us can match," she says. She shuts her eyes for several long moments, sighs, and Steve blinks, confused, because, darn, he might not have known her all that long, but he's pretty sure this much emotion out of her is abnormal. "Keep doing it," she says. "He needs to-- He needs--" She stops, takes a breath. When she looks at him again, her face is a blank mask again. "I know my report on him influenced your first-hand reaction to him. I'm sorry about that. I'm not proud of it, but I will admit that a lot of that was written out of spite." She shifts slightly, makes a single, short tic that might've qualified as a shamed look on anyone else. "Tony and Pepper were still a thing when I met them, and no one initially likes anyone their soulmate slept with before them, you know?"

Steve shrugs, uncomfortable. "I don't, really," he says. And he doesn't. He didn't have a chance to ever really meet Howard before the Serum sealed up the tears on his soul, gave him a whole one where everyone else in the world has only ever been born with a half. And however much he tried to, he never managed to dredge up those feelings for Howard. For Peggy, sure, that's another story, but that would've never gone anywhere, not really, not with Peggy's soulmate still somewhere out there. He doesn't have anything, really, to compare what Romanoff's talking about to.

"Well, I was a jealous bitch, and I _never_ let my emotions influence a job. Except that time." She turns and begins to walk, and Steve somehow just knows he's supposed to follow her, so he does, walks behind her into the open plan kitchen where she starts the coffee machine and pops some plastic tray of something or other into the microwave. "I actually really like Tony," she admits even as she's still working. "Juice?" she asks.

Steve blinks. "Sure."

She finds a glass and pours something orange out of a container depicting a bunch of stuff he doesn't even recognize. Fruits of some kind. He does recognize the orange. She pushes it across the table to him and Steve takes a sip, then another. Not bad at all. "I do like him," she continues. "But this isn't about me. It's... For so long, Pepper and Tony were each other's whole world. They are the closest thing to family that exists anywhere in the world to each other. I need him to be okay, because I like him a lot, and Pepper loves him to death. You understand?" For a fraction of a moment, she looks painfully vulnerable. Then she is a flurry of motion again, placing a mug of coffee and a steaming plate of eggy, bacony something or other in front of him.

Steve nods slowly. The loved one of a loved one. He's starting to understand that a hell of a lot better than he ever did before the ice. "Don't worry," he says, picking up his fork and digging into the strange, rubbery eggs. "He's Bucky's soulmate. Anything I can do."

Romanoff nods, and just like that Steve can all but feel the silent pact forming between them. She takes a quick breath, then nods towards the staircase. "Downstairs, third door on the right. It's been made up for you. There should even be some clothes in something like your size. Get some rest. We'll need you back up here as soon as possible."

Steve gives another nod, finishes eating and drinking and walks down towards the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone for leaving kudos, for bookmarking and subscribing and especially for commenting. Those comments honestly never fail to make my day and put big, ridiculous smiles on my face.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not at all sure about the Barnes sisters, so at this point I'm just making it up as I go along. Any pointers would still be very helpful.

Ever since the Serum, Steve hasn't really needed that much sleep. Sure, he can sleep in when he's really pushed himself, when his whole body aches with exhaustion and there's nothing pressing to wake him up. This is not one of those times. He sleeps barely four hours and comes back awake within a couple of blinks. He makes the bed, showers and shaves and dresses, and finds himself completely uncertain about what he's supposed to do now. Tugging the too-small MIT t-shirt on, trying to make it stretch a little less obscenely around his chest, he makes it out the door and slowly makes his way towards the stairs.

"Captain Rogers," the ceiling voice says, startling Steve into jumping a foot into the air. "I'm sorry," the voice continues. "But we have finished analyzing the Iron Man armor wreckage Sir brought back through the wormhole with him. Dummy found something that I believe you are the most qualified to authenticate."

Steve frowns, still utterly confused by the whole ceiling voice thing. "Sure," he says slowly. He really has to ask someone what this is all about at some point. "How can I help?"

"If you'll follow the lights, please," the voice says, and with that green panels in the floor light up.

More uncertain by the moment, Steve follows the light panels. He almost stops and turns around several times, but he hasn't got to where he is today by being a coward. He just hopes he isn't making a mistake here.

The lights lead him into an elevator, and then there's a swoop in his stomach as it takes him down so fast his ears pop. Long moments later, the elevator doors open and Steve steps out into what could so darn easily have been one of the more outlandish scenes from one of Bucky's dime novels. There are strange lights hovering in midair, forming alien patterns and pictures more artistic than anything Steve thinks he could've ever even begun to imagine. Beyond all that, numerous worktables sit littered with tools and half-finished projects so futuristic Steve doesn't know anything like a name for them. In the back of the room, several Iron Man suits rest in individual niches, each one carefully maintained and spotlighted. And in between it all, three strange, mechanical arms are scrambling back and forth, apparently working on a banged up, disassembled armor wreck. "What is this place?" Steve breathes.

"This, Captain, would be Sir's workshop," Ceiling Voice says. "Dummy?"

One of the mechanical arms wheels towards him. Something is clutched in its grasp, dangling back and forth, almost hypnotically, on a bulky chain. The arm reaches Steve, and the series of beeps it lets out kind of makes Steve think that maybe it's more a primitive robot than just a mechanical arm on wheels. And then Steve catches sight of what it's holding. He reached out immediately, grips the dangling pieces of metal. The robot arm lets go and Steve holds his quarry up to his face, feels his breath catch in his throat as he takes in the shape of the dog tags, takes in the stamped words. "What the heck is this? Did he have these made?"

"I have never seen any evidence of these before Sir returned through the portal, Captain," Ceiling Voice says. "And I oversee all of Sir's projects."

Steve swallows down the sudden knot in his throat, stares at the dog tags through blurry eyes as he reads the Barnes, James B., the long familiar social security number, the blood type, the C for Catholic. He rubs his thumb over the raised letters and numbers, swallows down another lump of emotion. "How did it get here, then?"

"I'm afraid I can't say, Captain," Ceiling Voice says.

Steve sucks in a deep breath, nods, steels himself. If Ceiling Voice isn't going to answer - probably wouldn't be wise to trust it anyway - Steve's going to have to get his answers elsewhere. He walks back to the elevator, walks inside. "Take me back up, please," he says.

The doors shut and the elevator shoots up. Steve's clenching the tags, he realizes. Not hard enough to bend the metal, but definitely hard enough that it's biting into the skin of his palm. Slowly, carefully, he loosens his grip. His ears are popping again, but he barely even notices, because he kind of feels like he's stepped into vertigo. If Tony hasn't made these dog tags, where did they come from? Aside from the inscriptions, they are virtually identical to Steve's own. Even more than that, Steve vaguely remembers Bucky needing new tags after HYDRA. Which, well, HYDRA might've taken his original ones from him, but. Steve shuts his eyes for a moment, tries to find his balance again as the doors slide open in front of him. Squaring his shoulders, he walks back into the penthouse, and right into the empty living room.

Down the hall, he can hear their voices. He follows the sound, heart suddenly right back in his throat with worry. He eats up the feet down the hall in a few quick strides, pushes the ajar door all the way open and steps carefully inside. And there's Ms. Potts, breaking down in the chair while Romanoff holds her through it, Tony restrained on the bed as he shakes through another seizure, actual foam staining his lips while Banner empties a syringe of God knows what into the IV line. Steve feels nauseous within seconds, reaches up to cover his mouth with a hand. The vertigo is right back. The sharp sensation of metal against his lips is the only thing, for a moment, that keeps him grounded. And he doesn't want to be here. With something like this, there's not a damn thing he can do to help, but that doesn't make it not hurt. If anything, the helplessness just makes it worse, makes his legs feel weak, makes his chest and throat feel tight, and he has never wanted Bucky to be with him, with Tony, as badly as he does right now. Another few seconds, and he can't watch anymore. He slips back out, staggers back into the living room and collapses on the couch.

He hates this, hates how badly Tony must be suffering, hates the fact that he, Steve, is here and Bucky is not, the way there is not a darn thing he can do to make anything even a single bit better. He hates this, has always hated this, the helplessness, and he has no idea how his ma did this, how Bucky did this, how they waited out Steve's childhood (and adulthood) illnesses. He is so darn happy he has never before been on the other side of this equation.

Steve has no idea how long he sits there, barely breathing as he prays for Tony to survive yet another round of this hell. The sun is becoming visible in the east turned window by the time Banner shows back up, Romanoff on his heels. "He's going to live to fight another day," Banner says, and he sounds worn down, absolutely exhausted as he plops down into the couch next to Steve.

Steve lets out a breath he never even realized he's been holding. "Sleeping?" he asks.

Banner shakes his head. "Catatonic again," he says.

"You should go back in there pretty soon," Romanoff adds. "See if you can get a reaction out of him again."

Banner nods. "If he doesn't start to come back to reality soon, if he keeps reaching out so frequently, it's going to kill him."

Steve nods, forces himself to take a breath rather than crumble under yet another lump in his throat. "You got any idea about authentic versus fake World War Two paraphernalia?" he asks then, holding up the dog tags.

Romanoff narrows her eyes, reaches out and snatches the tags out of his hand. She squints at them up close, even goes so far as to bite one. "Real," she finally says, giving it back to him. "Not aged properly, though. Looks way too new. You bring these into the ice with you?"

Steve shakes his head. "Tony's robots dug them out of the armor," he says.

Without warning, Banner snatches the tags right back out of Steve's hand, looks them over closely. "Tony had these, after he came out of the portal?" he says. "He didn't manufacture them?"

"The Ceiling Voice says he didn't," Steve says.

Banner blinks, then cracks the barest shadow of a smile. "JARVIS," he says. "Cap, meet JARVIS, Tony's AI." He pauses a moment. "Artificial intelligence," he clarifies then. "Non-corporeal computer butler." He turns his head, looks at Romanoff. "If JARVIS says Tony didn't make them..."

Romanoff nods decisively. "Then Tony didn't make them," she agrees. "Which means..."

Banner nods, suddenly wide-eyed like a child faced with a brand new comic book. "They're real," he says. "I need to call Foster."

"Dialing now, Dr. Banner," Ceili-- JARVIS says.

"What's going on?" Steve asks.

"I can't really say right now, Cap," Banner says. "I need to talk to Foster. Just." He stops, takes a breath, runs a shaking hand through his dark curls. "Go sit with Tony for a bit, please. Any reaction you can get out of him is a step in the right direction."

Steve wants to ask a million questions, but he is smart enough to get that that's not what's important right now. Him getting answers is so far down the list of priorities it's ridiculous, and if Banner needs to consult with other scientists, Steve isn't going to be a bother. He pulls himself up off the couch and makes his way back into the bedroom.

Ms. Potts is still sitting in the chair, strawberry blonde hair forming a messy waterfall over her slender shoulders where she's leaning over the bed, one of Tony's hands clenched in both of hers. Steve grips another chair, pulls it up to the opposite side of the bed, and he feels so incredibly self-conscious with Ms. Potts still in the room that he's not sure he can even get his own mouth to work.

Tony's as still as last night. Almost. His eyes are as distant and dead. His body is as ridiculously small and frighteningly still, aside from his free hand, which is still shaking all over the place. As Steve watches, the shakes get worse, begin to spread, threatening another full-on seizure, and Tony is so pale, so thin, so darn frail Steve isn't sure his body can take another one so soon. "Tony," Steve says, trying to pretend Ms. Potts isn't there. "Tony, please."

Tony's mouth actually drops open, and Steve darn near jumps, because after last night any reaction so strong is so much more than he could've begun to hope for. Tony's head drops to the side, his neck looking darn near boneless. "James," he manages then, voice scratchy and hoarse and barely there and yet so darn heartbreaking Steve has to shut his eyes for a moment. "James."

"I'll call Rhodey," Ms. Potts says, and her voice is a virtual sob. She pulls herself out of a chair, weary as a woman twice her age, and leaves the room.

"Tony," Steve says, pooling all his focus on the broken form on the bed. "Tony, please."

Tony doesn't turn towards him, keeps staring off into space. "James," he says again, and the name ends on a hoarse sob so broken it's barely even audible.

Steve tries to take a deep breath, just barely even manages. He stops, shuts his eyes tight, actually takes that proper breath. He lets his instinct take over, lets it tell him what he should do now, how he should deal with this situation. "Hey, Dollface," he says, letting himself drop into the thick Brooklyn twang USO trained him right out of so long ago. "I needya t'look at me right now."

Tony blinks, rapid and disoriented.

"Honey," Steve says, keeping his voice steady by sheer force. "I needya t'look at me. Look at me, Doll."

Slowly, Tony's hand stops flapping, falls limp against the sheet.

"I know it's hard right now," Steve says. "I know it hurts. I know. But right now, ya can't go droppin' the ball. Bu-- James. James wouldn't wancha t'just quit. You're better than this, Tony. Please."

Between one moment and the next, Tony crumples, and then he's in Steve's arms, sobbing, alive and breathing and present, at last, but crying his heart out, gasping and shaking. Steve gets out of his chair, moves onto the edge of the bed. He wraps his arms around Tony's trembling form, pulls him close and holds him tight and tries not to think about all the times he held Bucky's sisters like this. A moment later, he doesn't even have to try, because he's rooted in the moment in a way he hasn't been once in this century, even during the Battle of Manhattan. The solid weight of a living human being in his arms is something he hasn't felt in so long that the feeling makes something inside him hurt, makes a tenderness ripen and bloom inside him in a way he doesn't even begin to really understand. He strokes one hand slowly down Tony's spine, uses the other one to cup the nape of his neck. Tony clings to him, one hand fisted in Steve's (probably originally Tony's own) undersized t-shirt and the other one pawing at his shoulder, and the way he sobs, the way he clings, the way he oozes desperation makes Steve pull him tighter, rearranging himself until he can pull Tony into a position where he's damn near in Steve's lap, and Tony doesn't seem to even notice, clinging and crying and breaking Steve's darn heart.

Steve squeezes his own eyes shut, kisses the top of Tony's messy, greasy, unkempt hair, and there is something so extremely connecting about missing the same person so desperately it physically hurts. There is something about it that, perhaps sickly so, makes Steve feel more at home than he ever has before for even a second in this century. Tony keeps crying, for longer than Steve has ever realized a person even can cry, until Steve's blinking back tears of his own, whispering comforting nonsense in his thickest Brooklyn twang into Tony's temple.

He isn't entirely sure when Tony's arms start to go laxer and Tony's body grows heavier against his. He just stays where he is, trying to lend his body heat to the too cold man in his arms, trying to let him get a bit of honest rest. He reaches around, tucks up the sheets, covering Tony's body as best as he can despite the scorching heat of the room. Steve's sweating like a pig, but Tony's still far too cold in his arms, frighteningly cold, so Steve wraps his arms around him all the more closely.

The others re-enter the room what might either be moments or hours later. "We need to get food into him," Banner says, even as he attaches another bag into the IV. "Salt water," he explains. "Don't want to have to deal with dehydration here. But he needs food. He's. Two months ago, he was a healthy weight. He's what, five, ten kilos below that now?"

"Fifteen pounds, probably," Ms. Potts says, and her voice still sounds so worn it's painful. "Twenty, maybe."

"Probably closer to twenty," Romanoff says. She turns to Steve, green eyes intent. "Do you think you can get him to eat next time?"

Steve gives a small shrug, keeping his motions slow and controlled. Last thing he wants is to wake Tony up right now. "Biggest response I've got from him is him breaking down crying when I broke out the Brooklyn," he says. "I doubt I can get him to do anything."

"You're going to have to try," Banner says. "Or we'll have to tube feed him."

Steve doesn't know what that means, but it does not sound good at all. "I'll try," he promises, even as he slowly begins to inch out from under Tony, making sure to carefully arrange Tony in the most comfortable way he can. Bit by bit, he frees himself and tucks the sheets down around Tony's too-small, sleeping form. "Is there a blanket?" he asks. "He's cold as ice."

Ms. Potts, without a word, leaves the room and returns a moment later with a thick, woolen blanket, which she tucks down around her charge, careful and gentle as a fussing mother.

"So," Romanoff says slowly. "Brooklyn accent is the key?"

Steve shrugs. "Maybe I just got lucky," he says.

Banner opens his mouth to say something, but JARVIS is faster, cutting him off before he gets out his first syllable. "Dr. Banner," he says. "Dr. Foster is requesting entrance to the Tower. She wishes to speak with you immediately."

Banner casts a quick glance at Tony, reassures himself that the other man is all right. Then he gives a quick nod, looks at Ms. Potts for confirmation. Ms. Potts returns his nod decisively. "Send her up," Banner says.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that was a long couple of hours for some of you, but as I read back through the chapter, I realised there was a bit of something I needed to delve into a bit further, a scene that needed to be longer. So, I took the time to do that, and this is now the longest chapter of the story so far. Hopefully that makes up for the few hours' delay.

"This," Foster says, pointing at the dog tags with more enthusiasm than Steve thinks anyone has ever had over a pair of dog tags. And he has seen squealing girls getting them from their best guys before the men shipped out, "is proof. It's proof of the theory, it's. Dr. Banner, you know what this means. This is an absolute breakthrough."

Steve kind of wishes someone would speak English without constantly referencing something or other he has absolutely no way to understand. He's not stupid, no matter how they're making him feel right now. It's just that all he's got to boost him up is an unfinished art college degree and the military, and then about seventy years of missed knowledge. "What are you saying?" he asks.

Her dark eyes, glinting with life and curiosity, alight on him for several long seconds. "You have to know more about this than anyone alive, save for Tony," she says. "When would you say Tony entered into Sergeant Barnes's timeline?"

Steve blinks, shakes his head. And it's not that he's an idiot. He knows the basics of time travel. He's read Wells, has read more dime novels and zines than they probably realize even existed back then. The thing is, though, he and Bucky have never spent two months apart, discounting the year and a bit Steve was late in being born. And. He sucks in a sharp breath. The time when Bucky was deployed and Steve was stuck back home, first in basic training and then with the USO, a year and then some, easily. "Forty-two," he says. "Forty-three. Can't have been any other time, or I'd have met him, and Tony's not someone you forget."

Banner frowns for a moment, thinking. "While he was deployed in Europe, before you got there," he says.

Steve swallows, nods. "He needed new tags," he hears himself say, the words murky as if he was hearing through soaked ears. "I thought it was because HYDRA took them." And he can feel some kind of betrayal building up inside him, because if Bucky met Tony during that period, he had two years to tell Steve and never did. And okay, sure, it would've been complicated. Tony alone would've made everything complicated without even considering time travel and everything involved. But Bucky and Steve had always told each other everything, always. Yes, Bucky had been different after Steve reached Europe, but anyone would've been different after what he went through. Steve still remembers stepping into that room, seeing Bucky strapped down, weak as a child, so out of it all he could do was keep speaking his name, rank and service number. He still remembers it as clearly as if it were yesterday, Bucky, cracked and bruised, moaning mantras, the pink triangle pinned to his uniform, declaring to everyone that the name on his wrist was that of another man, that he was 'less' was 'inhuman', something you could do anything to without a speck of retribution. Yeah, Bucky had been different after. Who wouldn't have been? 

What Steve can't wrap his mind around is the idea that before that, before HYDRA, there was Tony. Why wouldn't Bucky have told him? He had to have known Steve would understand. Whatever society said, they'd always stuck together. Even with no name on Steve's wrist, Bucky had to have known Steve would never condemn him. Even with... Except, Bucky believed so much stuff from all his zines and dime novels, believed time travel was possible, believed mankind would one day explore the far reaches of space, believed so many things that had only ever been fiction, and Steve had only ever laughed at him. Why, then, would Bucky tell him about a superpowered, superarmored soulmate with a permanent nightlight who'd traveled in from nearly seventy years in the future and finally freed Bucky from that all-too-serene, all-too-distant unborn voice that had always roamed his mind? Steve swallows painfully, hates how easy it suddenly is to understand. No, in Bucky's shoes, he wouldn't have told him either. "I guess I didn't always listen as well as I should've," he admits.

"I don't think a whole lot of people would've been ready to listen to their friend ramble on about these kinds of things," Jane says. "I mean, we're sixty-seven years later, and we still don't understand how all this works."

One thing makes Steve ache more than anything, though. "If Tony went back," he says. "He has to have known that Bucky was going to fall off the train. Why didn't he stop him?"

"There are a lot of things we don't understand yet when it comes to time travel," Banner says. "A hell of a lot. Tony's the only real life time traveler I know of, so really, we're blind in the dark here. One theory, the one I'm leaning towards here, is that time is a set entity. It is capable of protecting itself from paradoxes. So when Tony got close to an event that would create a paradox--"

"--Like," Foster adds, "If, say, he were within days of meeting someone or doing something that would change the timeline enough that he wouldn't have gone back in the first place, he'd have been bounced back to his home timeline. What's more pertinent is that if we believe that the timeline is capable of protecting itself, it would've also made Tony somehow physically incapable of saying anything that would've changed it. That's the theory anyway. No one really knows exactly how it works, but from this example, even without Dr. Stark's input, I'm going to have to stand in support of the resilient timeline theory."

"He hates being called 'Doctor', by the way," Banner says. "Doesn't much like 'Mister' either. Mostly, he just prefers Tony." He pauses a moment. "I didn't get to know him that well, just."

Foster nods. "Respect his wishes," she says, and her voice carries an odd, solemn weight despite the strange quote on her t-shirt and the holes in her too-big jeans. She thrusts a tiny hand forwards. "Jane," she says.

Banner reaches out and grasps it. His hand covers hers entirely as they shake. "Bruce," he says. He turns half a mind to Steve. "Same to you, Cap."

Steve nods, swallows, tries to keep all this time trial stuff, everything it tells him about Bucky, at arm's length. "Steve," he returns, squeezing Banner's - _Bruce's_ \- shoulder, and making sure to look at Foster - Jane - to make sure she knows she's included too.

She gives him a nod, blushing ever so slightly as she does so.

"Tony's a doctor?" Steve hears himself ask.

Bruce flashes him a truly amused grin, the first Steve thinks he's ever seen out of him. "Not MD," he says. "Medical," he adds, as though Steve is a complete idiot. "PhD. Three of them, I think. Mechanical and electrical engineering and physics."

"I heard he has ones in business and PR as well," Jane adds.

Bruce snorts. "He should ask for his money back in that case," he says. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if he had a couple more in obscure branches of physics, 'just for fun'. He did learn applied nuclear physics in a day or so."

Jane flashes Bruce a kind of smile that sort of reminds Steve of the girls who'd show up at USO shows back in the day, except it's not for him, not about good looks or stupid songs. It's someone intelligent as heck looking up to someone even more intelligent, and Steve feels a stab of appreciation, wishes he'd given himself more chances to see Tony Stark at his peak, wishes he'll have more chances in the future. If other scientists talk about him like this, Steve can't being to imagine, even with a view of the workshop clear in his mind, what Tony Stark is capable of.

"Particle and quantum physics," Romanoff says, and Steve has to stop himself from jumping. He never even noticed her showing up at the table. "One in each. He took them on a whim within a few months after he synthesized vibranium in a homemade particle accelerator." She sits down in the chair next to Steve at the kitchen table where they've been... comparing notes, he guesses, or something. "I actually think he had JARVIS write up the theses and just defended them himself." A shrug of slim shoulders. "If we're done fanboying. And girling. What's the verdict?"

"He very likely went back in time," Jane says. "Stayed there until the space time continuum catapulted him back. My guess is that he not only met James Barnes, but spent nearly two months in close proximity with him. So what we're dealing with now really is a mixture of acute bond loss and whatever complications he had prior to the time jump."

Bruce shrugs. "She's the expert," he says.

"And we still have no idea what those previous complications are all about?" Romanoff asks, sitting down next to Steve on a backwards chair. "I mean, I still don't get it. Howard Stark's notes don't really explain it either." She reaches out, pushes what look like a pair of old, leather-bound notebooks onto the table. "Usually, when one soulmate dies before the two meet, all you are supposed to feel is a bit of loneliness, a period of manageable depression. Not something that's more like epilepsy than anything."

Bruce picks up one of the notebooks, takes a moment to thumb through the pages, and Steve winces, suddenly uncomfortable. Howard's notes, by right, are Tony's personal property. Private, and should stay private unless he's given his permission. Right now, Steve sincerely doubts Tony is able to give permission for anything.

Steve clears his throat. "Are you sure we should be--"

Romanoff turns sharp, green eyes on him. "I'm not trying to betray him," she says. "I'm trying to make sure we have all the information we need to help him."

Steve sighs, nods. Tony's life is more important than his privacy.

"On first glance," Bruce says, handing the notebook over to Jane. "It makes sense. The fact that he never had another soul half to connect to explains the autistic tendencies Howard recorded when it comes to feelings and relationships. You're right though." He looks straight at Romanoff for a moment. "None of it explains the seizures, or the childhood hysteria Howard described in there." He gives a small shake of his head. His eyes go momentarily green when he glances at the notebook Jane is eagerly skimming through. "Of course, the fact that Tony's the only known case means that we can't really say anything. And, well."

"Doesn't make sense," Jane adds. "The hysteria and seizures would make far more sense with a living soulmate who deliberately rebuffs every attempt at connection. That would be like a punch in the brain every single time. If not for the fact that Barnes's death is well-documented - I mean, we have an eyewitness right here." Steve bites back the sudden, impossible hope rising inside him at those words. It's like she says, Steve saw Bucky die. Saw him fall off a mountainside, down hundreds of feet. No human being could've survived that. "So, I guess it just somehow does come back to the fact that Barnes died before St-- Tony was born."

Suddenly, Steve just wants this conversation over with. He gets off his chair, pushes behind Romanoff. Let them keep talking, so long as he doesn't have to listen. He reaches out, snatches the dog tags, chain included, off the table, and holds them out to Romanoff. "Give these to him," he says. "They're rightfully his. He should have them. Might even help." He thrusts them at her. "Just give them to him, please."

Romanoff looks at him for several long moments, considering. Then she nods, snatches them out of his hand. "I will," she says. "You're on the night watch, Cap. We need to connect him as much as we can, and you're our best card. He's asleep right now. Make sure you're ready for when he's not."

Steve nods. Then he excuses himself from the tabled discussion and steps into the elevator, head reeling with all this new, impossible information. "Any heavy bags in the Tower, JARVIS?"

"Of course, Captain. I'll take you to the gymnasium level, shall I?" He doesn't wait for confirmation before closing the doors and zooming them down a few levels.

He wraps his knuckles in quick, economic movements. He might've only ever been a failed fighter, but he spent enough times in the decrepit rings at the local Y that rolling on the wraps is second nature. And then he steps up to the heavy bag. He lets out a long breath and finally lets go of the sadness and helplessness and guilt, lets the deeper, more primal feeling underneath have free reign. He's angry. He is so fucking angry it burns through him, powers his punches to something that's transcending even his own superhuman abilities. He is so angry, with Bucky, for picking up the shield and trying to protect Steve one last time when, by all rights, Steve should've been the one protecting him. With Howard, for betraying his own son by giving him the name glimpsed on the wrist on a long-fallen compatriot. With himself, for the abuse he rained down on Tony on the helicarrier. With Bruce and Jane for their impersonal, painful speculation. With all the fates that coalesced into Steve's only living family lying deadly ill and impossibly small on a bed a few floors up, with not a damn thing Steve can do to help him. He's not sure how long he keeps at it. The world narrows down to anger and punch after punch, not as coordinated as Bucky's would've been. He doesn't know the combinations, the intricacies, never before had the physical capabilities to master them. The bag holds up, somehow, far stronger than the ones at his local gym back in Brooklyn. He feels the pain in his knuckles vaguely, as if from far away, dull and distant, throbbing softly. By the time he hears the doors open somewhere behind him, he's bled through the wraps. Swallowing, he steadies the bag and turns around to face the intruder.

Colonel Rhodes meets his gaze evenly for long moments before his eyes flick down to Steve's hands. His eyebrows lift. "I think it's about time you took a break, Soldier," he says.

Steve throws him a salute; some habits are impossible to shake. "Colonel," he greets before unwrapping his knuckles quickly.

The colonel grimaces. "Jim," he says. "Or Rhodey. Whichever one you prefer. You're not one of my boys. Don't want you standing at attention."

Steve nods, though he doesn't really understand, doesn't know what to do with the lack of formality. Either way, he's known too many guys named Jim and James in his day. "Rhodey," he decides. He thrusts out a hand, grimaces when he sees the blood smeared across his own knuckles. "Steve," he says anyway.

Rhodey casts a glance at his hand, then seems to dismiss the gore, reaching out to clasp Steve's hand in a firm grasp that might have been truly painful before the Serum. "It's an honor, Sir," Rhodey says.

Steve grimaces. "Pretty sure you're the higher rank here, Sir," he returns.

Rhodey flashes him a half-hearted grin. "Maybe," he says. "But you didn't grow up hearing stories about Colonel Rhodes." He stops, takes a breath. "Never mind," he says at last. "Tony's one of my oldest friends. We went to college together, you know. He was just this tiny, pain-in-the-ass little shit back then. Kind of grew on me, though. I wanted to thank you for the help you've been able to give him."

Steve nods, swallows down a sudden lump in his throat. "Of course," he says. "He's. Tony. He's." He has to stop, squeeze his eyes shut and pull himself together. "He's family," he says at last. "Maybe there's no piece of paper to confirm it, but we've been connected since I was barely more than a baby." He pauses, hurries to add, "I'm not Bucky. I wouldn't ever pretend to be. But Bucky was my brother in everything but name. Even discounting Howard, that. It matters."

Rhodey nods, his dark face solemn, and Steve can see traces of so many other aspects of this man beneath the solemnity. He can see the fun-loving friend, the responsible officer, the stern hero and intense scientist, and whatever else comes of this meeting, whatever Rhodey ends up taking away, Steve likes this man already, he really, truly does. "If it had been up to me, I'd have never brought you in," Rhodey says then. "I mean, I get Romanoff's reasoning. It might've only been one mission, but she's well trained. She sees the group of you as a team, which makes you not only her commanding officer, but Tony's too. She'll have seen informing you as her duty, but." He stops, sighs. "By all accounts, you and Tony didn't get off on the best foot. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for whatever you've done to help him. But. Tony's no soldier. Don't be surprised if he comes back to himself cursing you to hell for seeing him vulnerable."

Steve swallows, because he can see that happening, and it's fair, even if he's never stopped to think about it like that before. Then he nods. "Let him hate me," he says. "So long as he's well enough to do that."

Rhodey nods with what Steve thinks is grudging approval. "I hear he liked Banner," he says. "And he might deny it from here to hell, but he does have a thing about strays. Besides, anything that keeps him out of medical is something Tony Stark will wholeheartedly approve of. Romanoff's already family, even if I kind of think those two like to hate each other for fun half the time. Barton's been kept away from the penthouse. Which leaves you, Cap. Tony's a proud man. Just don't blame him for any liberties the rest of you take while he's out of commission."

Steve nods, tries not to panic at the thought of the only true connection he's got to this century hating him, sending him away, tries not to panic at the thought of never getting to cradle that solid, shivering weight in his arms again. He can handle that, if need be. So long as Tony ends up all right. "I know the risks," he says. "And he's not just part of the team. I already told you, he's family."

Rhodey looks at him long and serious. Then he sighs. "That might not make things better," he says. "Tony's my brother in everything but name." He gives a half-hearted smile. "You might say I'm his Bucky. I don't want him hurt. But I also understand coming back from a long deployment. I don't want you burnt either, Steve."

Steve shrugs. "I'm a big boy," he says. "I can handle it. What's important right now is Tony."

Rhodey nods. "Got that in one," he says. "I'll go sit with him for a bit. You get a shower and a bit of rest. Come relieve me in five hours. I'll need a break round about then. Haven't had a wink since I left Syria this morning."

Steve nods, winces as he takes in the sight of his wraps again. He doesn't want to throw them out, but he's not sure there's a detergent strong enough to get the blood out of them. "JARVIS?" he asks uncertainly.

"Throw them down the garbage chute in your quarters, Captain Rogers," JARVIS says even as Rhodey strides out of the gymnasium.

"Sure," Steve says. "Thanks." He doesn't have the first clue how he's supposed to get even a wink of sleep with the new weights Rhodey has added to his existence. He'll find some way, though. He always does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos, bookmarks and subscriptions, and thank you so, so much for all the thoughtful, incredible comments. I am so grateful for all the support, and to all those of you who decided to come out of lurkerdom to leave your thoughts.
> 
> I will add that I always answer all comments. Not immediately. Sometimes there might be delays, and I don't necessarily answer in any logical order. Some comments make me think more than others, and I want to take the time to put the amount of thought into the replies that those deserve. I appreciate every single one, though, which is why I'll continue to do everything I can to always answer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, and the next one, are very light on plot and action, most focusing on Tony's progress, with some H/C and stuff, and I know that's not necessarilly as fulfilling as something with more tension in it. It is necessary for a story of this kind, though, so I hope you can forgive me and enjoy anyway. To make up for it, I'll do my best to post the next chapter tomorrow.

It's another week before Tony manages to go a full twenty-four hours without a seizure. At some point, maybe three days in, Steve gives his apartment keys to a frowning man named Happy who returns with Steve's meager belongings, and the single sagging duffel bag looks that much more pathetic in the streamlined guestroom in the Tower than it ever did in his ratty S.H.I.E.L.D. issued apartment. Not that it matters, really. Steve's possessions, or lack of same, are pretty far down a list of priorities that's mostly dominated by Tony. And Tony is getting better, steadily but far more slowly than anyone would've liked. He will chew something when it's put in his mouth, at least a bit, enough that Steve doesn't hear more words like 'feeding tube'. Bit by bit, the dead, vacant look begins to leave his eyes, replaced by heart-rending sadness, but at least there's focus there, enough that Steve can feel those dark, broken eyes follow him around as he moves through the room.

Steve feels like he's spending darn near every waking moment in that room, not that he minds. He can see Tony's slow progress, can tell that he is making a difference even if all he is doing is talking himself hoarse, throwing out random childhood stories about him and Bucky in his thickest Brooklyn twang, probably repeating himself over and over again, and holding Tony through the shakes when he inevitably breaks down and reaches his hands out for someone who's no longer there, hasn't been there for nearly seventy years. It makes Steve feel a connection, or something like it, to this time, this culture and this whole world that he no longer understands. When Rhodey's short leave is over and he has to go back to the front and Romanoff convinces Ms. Potts she has to return to her duties as CEO of Stark industries and forge through the apparent awkwardness in the wider world that suddenly exists as a result of Tony Stark not being dead after all, Steve simply shoulders their parts of the responsibility. It's not like he's got anything better to do.

Steve's been in the Tower for nearly two weeks when he first sees the really big change. It's the dead of night, as dark outside as New York ever gets these days, and Steve's been speaking for hours, speaking his voice raw and his throat so dry he has to stop and take a drink of water. At first, he doesn't even realize Tony's speaking. His voice is so worn and so low that it almost fades into the background hum of technology and machinery. Then a too-thin, trembling hand shoots out, long, calloused fingers wrap around Steve's wrist, and Steve turns immediately to look at him, shocked at this attempt at contact. Tony hasn't initiated any single thing, not a one, since he came back. 

"I wasn'," Tony says again, stops. His throat works for a moment. "I wasn' gonna come back," he says, and there's something desperate about his eyes, something that's begging Steve to understand, to not judge. "I didn' wanna. I wanteda stay." He's slurring his words worse than Steve thinks he's ever heard anyone do, but he's understandable and he's reaching out, which means the darn world right now. "I didn' care 'bout th'timeline. I jus' wanteda stay. Wi'James. I didn' wanna come back. Why'd I hafta come back?" Steve swallows around a lump in his throat, because he understands that sentiment, understands it so well it hurts. How many times has he wondered whether he'd have been better off if they'd just left him in the ice? Right now, it's not about him, though, and when Tony breaks down in great, heaving sobs again, Steve lets go of all his own thoughts, all his own selfish desires, wraps his arms around Tony like he has so many times already, pulls him into his lap and rocks him like a child. "It hurts," Tony manages between sobs, between Steve shushing him and kissing his hair. "Hurts so bad. Wan'it t'stop. Make it stop." Steve squeezes his eyes shut around the sting, keeps himself together with military discipline, and keeps doing whatever he can to comfort Tony, not that he seems to be making much of a difference. This time, with Tony more alert than he's been since he came back, he seems more inconsolable than ever.

The sky is turning a pale, pastel blue outside by the time Tony's cried himself dry, when all he can do is cling and sniffle and hiccup. It takes another two hours before he falls into a restless sleep. Steve carefully begins to maneuver out from beneath Tony, but the more distance he tries to put between them, the more Tony's hands tighten in the fabric of his shirt, the more closely he clings, even in his sleep. Steve makes another attempt, doesn't want to make this all more inappropriate than he fears it already is. Except when he begins to carefully extricate Tony's hands from his clothes, Tony lets out a long whine that's halfway another sob, and the sound is so painful Steve gives up immediately, settling back down and pulling up the sheets and blankets to cover them. He pushes himself into the pillows, gets as comfortable as he can and shifts Tony until his cheek is against Steve's chest. Steve lets out a deep breath, lets his own eyes fall shut. He needs his rest too, and if anything does change with Tony, being this close, there is no way Steve won't notice.

***

Tony starts talking more after that. Not communicating, not really, because 'communicating' kind of implies a kind of back and forth that still seems far beyond what Tony's shell-shocked mind can deal with. He does talk, though, even if all his words do is break Steve's heart over and over again, is make him miss Bucky all over again, make him miss his own time, despite the War, despite the Depression, despite everything that had gone wrong, makes him miss it so much it hurts. More than that, though, every scratch of Tony's voice, every cry for Bucky, every spoken or sobbed lament that he was forced back to his own time... It hurts, it hurts so darn bad, makes him want to go back in time himself, and not even for his own sake, but to punch Howard in the face and tell him about every bit of hurt he's caused Tony, force him to undo it. Something, anything to prevent this, to prevent the kind of agony Tony's going through right now.

There's another brief seizure, a couple of days after Tony first starts talking to say something other than Bucky's name, but Banner gets it under control with relative ease. Then, another couple of days later, Steve wakes up to feel Tony shoot out of bed, and yeah, the sharing a bed has apparently become a thing, and Steve's still not sure whether that's right or wrong, whether it's overstepping boundaries or taking advantage of simple mutual human comfort or whatever. Right now is not the time to think about that. Steve shoots up after him and follows him into the bathroom.

Tony's on his knees in front of the toilet bowl, hands shaking where they clutch the porcelain. His bare forearms are glistening with sweat. His clothes sag on him. And he's throwing up every bit of food, it seems, that Steve's managed to coax into him over the past couple of days, food he can't afford to lose. Steve swallows, scared all over again in a way he hasn't been since Tony first began to make really obvious progress. From everything he's heard and understood so far, Tony's bond situation has made him physically ill for as long as he's been alive, and bond loss alone can kill people. The combination of those conditions... No one knows the rules yet, and the last thing they need is another complication. For right now, Steve pushes away his worries and drops to his knees next to Tony, rubbing his spine, his nape, brushing his too-long hair out of his face. Even after he's done vomiting, Tony keeps clinging to the toilet, heaving and gagging, eyes wet and wide. It's probably another hour before Steve manages to pry him away from the high-tech porcelain bowl - _too_ high tech, if you ask Steve; it's spurted Tony in the face four times already - and guide him to the sink to clean out his mouth.

Steve ends up having to pick Tony up bridal style to get him back into bed with no accidents. He deposits him carefully on the mattress, tucks the blankets down around him, and hurries off into the kitchen. He asks JARVIS for advice as he goes and ends up finding Coke, liquid yoghurt and plain white bread, brings it all back into the bedroom. It takes the better part of two hours to coax Tony into eating it all, but then he finally falls back asleep, too pale, the rings around his eyes too dark, and the knot in the pit of Steve's stomach is so tight and heavy it's painful. He thought the worst was already over. What's he going to do if Tony starts backsliding? If Tony _dies_ , and Steve fails to save him all over again? God, please, no.

For the next few days, it kind of feels like all Steve's fears are going to come true. Tony regresses, physically. He's icy cold again, he's back to having seizures several times every darn day. He throws up every single bite of food they manage to get him to eat, and probably more. Somehow, though, he keeps making mental progress despite all that. Steve walks into the bedroom one day to find Tony watching something called Space Wars or something, mouthing along with every line of dialogue. A day or two later, Tony's having conversations, with JARVIS, with Ms. Potts, with Steve himself. He sticks to monosyllabic words, and he loses focus if anyone tries to cram more than five words into a sentence, but he is listening and making responses, so long as it's all kept simple.

Steve walks into the kitchen one morning after a rare night in his own bed after Ms. Potts insisted on taking the night watch, finds Tony at the kitchen bar, cradling a cup of coffee that he doesn't seem to actually be drinking and taking small nibbling bites out of a piece of dry toast. Steve stops in his tracks for a moment, has to take a breath to get himself accustomed to seeing Tony outside of the confines of the master suite. Then he puts on a smile, drinks in the huge forward leap, the enormous positive sign that this is. "Morning, Tony," he says.

Tony doesn't look up from his coffee. "Morning," he replies. He doesn't say anything else for a long time, and Steve begins to rifle through the fridge, finding the eggs and bacon, fires up the fridge and begins to cook his own breakfast. He's putting it all on the plate when Tony finally does talk again, "Can you tell the one 'bout James and the girls and the tea party 'gain?" he asks.

Steve stifles his own grin, because Tony doesn't react well to others being too thrilled by his progress. Reacts best when it's not acknowledged at all. He finishes plating instead, pours himself a glass of juice and sits down at the bar. "Sure," he says, forking in the first mouthful of food. He chews it, swallows. "Well, Bucky's parents were working all the time, so Buck, honestly, kinda raised his sisters halfway on his own. 'Specially Evie. She was the baby, almost ten years younger than Buck. So on days when Bucky didn't work but his parents did, he was on his own with the girls. Now, this once, for Evie's birthday, Charlie conned Mrs. O'Donnell into lendin' her a real china tea set, and Becky mended Mr. James's old coat in return for some tea and sugar, and then the two of them went on to arrange a tea party for Evie's fifth birthday. They roped Bucky and me into it and spent the whole afternoon reprimandin' Buck and tellin' him he neededa speak more polite and remember to stick out his pinkie, and the tea tasted terrible, and the scones they'd tried to make were dry and salty, and Bucky hated the whole thing, but he suffered through it because he loved those girls to death, and Evie had the best day of her life. She was all grins all day. So the next year, Bucky took his spendin' money and got the tea and sugar, borrowed the china, traded for rolls and butter, and re-enacted the whole thing, even though he hated it the first time 'round. He loved them so much, he'da taken any abuse to make them happy. And Evie was just as happy the second time 'round."

A small, soft smile settles on Tony's face. "I should look 'em up," he says, and his voice still has that disconcerting slur to it, like he's drunk or has taken a hard hit to the head, or like he's only got a fraction of his cylinders firing properly. "See if they're still alive. Shoulda done it 'fore now. Shoulda..." He stops, blinks, seems oddly confused. "JARVIS?"

"I'll look them up and set a reminder for when you're able to look up the results, Sir," JARVIS says, which is code for JARVIS doing the work but hiding the results until Tony's got the stability to deal with them. Steve might have to check up on it later. If any of the Barnes sisters are still alive... Steve's breath catches at the thought of it. They were his sisters almost as much as they were Bucky's, such a big part of his childhood, such a big part of his history. If any of them are still alive... Steve needs to know, needs to see them, needs it like he needs to breathe.

"Eat your toast, Tony," Steve reminds, keeping his voice as gentle as he knows how to. He reaches out, pushes the plate closer to Tony even as he discreetly slides the mug of untouched coffee away. He takes a deep sip of his own juice, eats a few forkfuls of egg and bacon.

Tony blinks, takes another baby-sized bite of his toast. "Tell me the one 'bout James's first cham." He stops. Blinks. "Cham." He says again. He pauses for a long time, wets his lips with his tongue. "Cham-pi-on-ship fight," he says at last, stumbling over the long word like it's a challenge, like it's difficult, like he isn't a certified genius who has a way with words that's supposedly darn near unparalleled. Right now he isn't that, though, Steve has to remember. Right now he's someone who's suffered a mental, neurological blow beyond anything Steve can even imagine, and if he's self aware enough to know the difference between himself before and himself now... Steve shudders to imagine what that must be like. He shuts the thought out of his mind, refuses to linger on it. Instead, he does as requested, tells the story about how Bucky was outmatched and outmuscled, played the evasion game for two rounds before winning on a near-dirty knock-out that was all brains, very little brawn relied on.

By the end of it, Tony's swaying in his chair, clearly exhausted, but there's a small smile on his face, and Steve will take any victory he's offered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for the kudos, bookmarks and subscriptions, and especially for the comments. They never fail to make my day.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, one more chapter for you lot.

A month and a bit after Steve moved into the Tower, he walks into the master bedroom to find the bed an unmade mess, but, more importantly, it's utterly empty. "JARVIS?" he asks, trying to keep the sudden stab of panic at bay.

"No need to worry, Captain," JARVIS says. "Sir is in his workshop. His vitals are stable. He has imbibed two smoothies without adverse affects, and neither one seems to have contained any toxic ingredients."

Steve nods briskly. "That sounds good, JARVIS," he says, striding towards the elevator as fast as he can. "Can you take me down there?"

"Certainly, Captain," JARVIS says, and then the elevator is zooming downwards, and Steve's ears are popping. A moment later, the doors are opening and Steve can see all the futuristic wonders he barely even began to process the one time he was down here to collect Bucky's dog tags, which have since found a permanent home around Tony's neck. And everything should be all the more alive now, with Tony down here. Steve's no idiot. He knows the rest of the world isn't at this level. He knows that Tony's workshop is probably the most advanced place on the planet. It's just, with Tony inside it, it should be even crazier, should be even more futuristic and impossible and incredible. Except Tony's in there and he's doing absolutely nothing. He's sitting in the middle of the floor, slumped over and all limp, looking painfully small. Steve can practically count his ribs even through the black weave of his undershirt.

Steve swallows, steels himself and walks inside. He takes another few steps, enough to carry him to where Tony's sitting. Steve reaches down, places a hand on one of Tony's shoulders. "Are you all right?" he asks.

For long moments, Tony doesn't speak. Then his shoulders rise and dip in a strange kind of half-shrug. "Not really," he says. "I'm. I don't. I don't remember what I was doing down here. Not sure if it was important. Why. I don't." He stops, exhales, and it sounds halfway like a sob. "I can't picture him here. I recognize stuff here. I think I should feel at home here. But I don't. I can't see him here."

"I can," Steve tells him. "I can see him here so clearly I'm half convinced he's about to step out from behind that cabinet right 'round now. He woulda loved this place. All of it, the lights, the computers, the robots, all the things that I can't even recognize. Bucky always spent half his brain living in the future. He would read every bit of sci-fi he could get his hands on. He'd buy the novels, the zines, sci-fi and pulp and what-have-you. He couldn't get his mind off it. He asked me, when he was eight, what I thought going to the moon would be like. He asked what it would be like if robots were as smart as people, if calculators were the size of a palm. He was." Steve has to stop, swallow. "He'd have been as at home here as you."

Tony looks around himself uncertainly. "I'm not sure how at home I am here anymore," he says, and his eyes are so lost, so wounded, it hurts somewhere so deep down inside Steve he doesn't know the word for it.

"You are," Steve says. "Take my word for it. I don't get a lot of the stuff that comes with this new century. But you look more yourself right here, right now, than you have for weeks."

Tony shrugs, doesn't reply. He does let Steve help him up off the floor before staggering over to the nearest monitor. "What ongoing projects do I have, JARVIS?" he asks. He very obviously ignores the Barnes family file JARVIS must've assembled for him, pulls the somehow all at once there and not there at all screen down to focus on different files by names that are more numbers than letters, something Steve can't interpret at all, but as Tony's uncertain fingers pull out one specific file and begin to manipulate the numbers, he looks so at home something inside Steve clenches and relaxes all at once.

"What are you doing?" Steve asks, and half-regrets it immediately, because, fuck, if Tony is finally starting to function on even the barest levels, Steve should just let him at it, shouldn't distract him or break him out of whatever flow he's somehow managed to enter into. Still, it's too late, and apologizing will only make it worse.

Tony hums for a moment, types in a number of other characters Steve can't even begin to recognize. Whatever language that is, it's not English. It isn't even the Latin alphabet, or any other alphabet Steve knows. His fingers grow surer by the second. And then, suddenly, Tony starts talking, and he's talking fast and confident, using four and five syllable words, voice deep and firm and darn, Steve hasn't heard him sounding like this since the helicarrier, and something about it, now that he's over his annoyance, makes him feel warm and oddly tingly. "--so if I implement these changes," Tony says, the words he's speaking finally making it through the surprise that's kept Steve frozen for minutes, "I'll be able to push down the cost, push up the durability and just. This is a really good fucking tablet." He blinks. "This is still ahead of the rest of the market, right, JARVIS?"

"Without a doubt, Sir," JARVIS reassures.

"Thanks," Tony says. "Save and render." He stops, leans his forehead against some tool Steve doesn't know the word for. "Jesus fucking Christ, I feel sick as a fucking skunk," he says. Then he frowns. "Do skunks get sick?" he asks. And then his words stop mattering because he's bending at the waist, gasping and heaving, throat working around nothing. Steve's there in a second, wrapping Tony under his arm and pulling him to the elevator. 

"Keep it in a moment longer," he instructs.

Tony nods, looks for a moment as thought he'd like to reply, but then his cheeks fatten out and his eyes go wide and his hand movements gain a new level of desperation. The elevator, if possible, speeds up even more. This time the pops in his ears are actually, physically painful, but then the doors open and Tony races out and Steve races after him and not one single other thing even begins to matter. A moment later, Steve's on his knees again, stroking Tony's spine and raking his hair back while Tony pays his however-many-times daily respects to the porcelain goddess. "Fuck," Tony says who even knows how much longer after. "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. My stomach hurts. It actually hurts. It hasn't hurt this bad since I got food poisoning in Belize in ninety-two."

Steve grimaces. "The Commandoes all got food poisoning in Italy that once," he says. "Bucky and I were the only ones who stayed well. It was utter hell. Try to imagine five grown men crying and groaning and puking all over the place."

Tony heaves one last time before he lets Steve help him back on his feet, lets himself be guided to the sink and the glass and water and mouthwash waiting there. "Yeah, that's just making me feel more sick, Cap, sorry."

"Sorry," Steve says, letting Tony lean on him on his way back to bed. "Did you at least figure out the problem with your... stone book?"

Tony bursts out laughing, long and hard and from deep in his stomach, and Steve feels something inside himself grow lighter at the sound. God, that sounds like home and warmth and Steve never, ever wants it to end. "Fucking shit, Grandpa, no one told you what a tablet is?" Tony asks. "JARVIS," he says. "Render one that's extra strong and durable. Keep what processing powers you can, but make sure it's still light and compact. Send it up here once it's done." He turns a bleary-eyed glare on Steve. "I'll teach you what a tablet is," he says, and makes it sound like a threat. "And the Internet. Has anyone introduced you to the wonders of Google and Internet porn yet?"

Steve shakes his head and blushes and feels all sorts of out of place, but at the same time this is the most Tony-ish Tony has been so far, and Steve definitely won't begrudge him that, even if it means a bit of discomfort on his part. "I'm not sure you're even still speaking English at this point," he confesses.

Tony flashes him a wide, sleepy grin. "Just you wait'n--" He lets out a loud yawn, large eyes blinking. His dark, thick lashes flutter over his eyes, creating an ever-shifting pattern of shadow over his cheeks that Steve suddenly wants to draw so badly his fingers hurt. "Ugh, sleep," Tony slurs. "Night, Cap."

"Good night, Tony," Steve says and stops himself from kissing Tony's temple. Whatever else has happened these past few weeks, Tony's mindset is no longer that of a damaged child. Steve has to watch what liberties he takes now. Honestly, he just has to be real darn grateful Tony hasn't asked him to back off or get lost or however it is you put it these days. He cannot, will not, push against those boundaries. If he loses his connection to Tony, he loses everything that anchors him to this new reality, and he's not sure how he'd ever survive that.

Steve goes back to sleeping in his own bed. With Tony inching ever closer to normal, it just gets too strange, threatens to take on connotations that are entirely inappropriate. He doesn't move back to his own apartment, though, doesn't really ever consider it for more than a few moments, and Tony doesn't ask him to leave, which pretty much settles it. 

Over the course of the summer, Tony continues getting better until, at some point in August, his physical symptoms have stopped and he's starting to gain back some weight. His behavior... Honestly, Steve can't really say, because he never knew Tony before the Battle of Manhattan. But judging by what everyone else says, he's back to something like it, something like himself. Which doesn't mean he doesn't sometimes go scarily still, motionless, for long, suspended breaths when he thinks no one is watching, eyes going wide and lost and pained. But Steve is pretty sure he does that too. It doesn't mean either one of them is about to crack and go completely off the far end.

In early September, Tony plops down on the living room sofa next to Steve, all faux nonchalance and relaxation. Without a word, he holds out a Starkpad. Blinking, Steve takes it out of his hands, directs his eyes at the screen. His breath catches at the familiar names spelled out in front of him. "Rebecca Siobhan Adams, née Barnes, died October third twenty-ten, aged ninety. She left behind two sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren, sixteen great grandchildren and one great great granddaughter. Charlotte Aoife Jones, née Barnes, died March fifth, nineteen-seventy-five, aged fifty-one. Left behind two daughters." He has to stop, take a breath, because. It feels just a few years ago that he was playing with those girls, babysitting them, growing up with them, and. He swallows down the knot in his throat. "Evelyn Ciara Barnes never married. Had one son, named James." He lets out something that might've been a chuckle if not for the fact that it feels like someone's got his heart in a vice. He doesn't know what to think, what to say. "Evie... Buck would've had words about that. And would've found someone to beat up." He takes a moment, steels himself and looks back down at the screen. "She's still alive. Lives in Brooklyn." He lets out a shuddering breath. "Evie's still alive," he repeats, and he can barely hear his own voice over the sudden rush of blood through his ears. For a moment, the letters on the screen blur, and he has to blink rapidly a few times before he has himself back under control. "Have you contacted her?"

"Nah," Tony says, voice deceptively nonchalant. Steve might even have bought it, except by now he knows Tony well enough to read the meaning of the tightness of his mouth, the way his hands twist nervously in the material of his sweatpants. "Figured it might be more comfortable for her if it came from someone she knows already. Contact information is in the file too." He fists his hands, stick them in his pocket, doesn't look at Steve. "How did James escape the curse of the ridiculously Irish middle name?"

Steve manages a smile, lets the conversation be redirected. "Winifred didn't have any brothers. Her father insisted on keeping the family name alive. So, two last names. No middle one." He shrugs. "Which of course resulted in the unfortunate James Buchanan situation, but. I think he was mostly relieved he didn't end up stuck with Donncha, which was a bit of a family thing on George's side." He can't help but smile at the gleeful laugh Tony lets out at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I got a food poisoning in Belize once. It was horrible.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone for the kudos, bookmarks and subscriptions, and especially for the comments. Turned me into one big grin. Keep the speculation coming :D


	9. Chapter 9

"He told me about them, you know," Tony says. He's tapping his fingers against his thigh, splayed out in the corner of the seat. He's better dressed than Steve has seen him yet, but carefully maintaining the but-not-trying-too-hard facade. Strange-colored glasses cover his eyes but don't hide them nearly as well as he probably thinks they do. "About his sisters. He loved them to death. He." He stops, wets his lips, and Steve doesn't interrupt, tries his best not to even move. It's so rare for Tony to say even a word or two about his time in the past. Steve sure isn't going to stop him when he offers something up on his own. "He talked about you too," he says then. "He was worried about you, what trouble you might be getting yourself into back home. I tried to tell him that you were fine, would be fine, and that even the part where you decided to become a science experiment would work out just fine. It was like. I couldn't. It was physically impossible to get the words out. It was physically impossible to tell him not to get on the train, it was." He falls silent, and his eyes are suspiciously shiny now, even through the shades. His lashes clump together. "I couldn't. I wanted to so badly, but something, just. Time, whatever. Something else always came out of my mouth. I tried to write it down, but when I re-checked what was on the paper, it was weird, horrible, embarrassing poetry. It. It's not that I didn't try to save him. Just." He stops, looks out the window. His fingers taptaptap, fast and erratic, out of rhythm. "You think she'll forgive me?"

Steve reaches out, grips his hand and stills his fingers, cradling the digits in his own hand. He doesn't mention the way Tony's hand shakes in his grip. "Ain't nothin' to forgive," Steve says, keeping his voice soft. He sweeps his thumb briefly over Tony's knuckles before letting go and leaning back, taking a moment to glance out through the tinted windows. They're passing the Brooklyn Bridge now, and some strange sense of nostalgia grips him for a moment. He reaches out, finds the car's wet bar, pours himself a glass of something or other. It won't have any effect, but he'd really like something to wrap his hands around right now. "You want one?" he asks.

Tony shakes his head, turning again to look out his own side window. "If I start drinking right now, I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to stop," he says. "Besides, I think I'm a bit car sick, maybe." He grimaces, shifts once more, so clearly uncomfortable and Steve wishes he could help him settle somehow, but if he tries he might just as easily agitate him further. Right now, that's the last thing either one of them needs. At the very least, he doesn't go back to the finger-tapping. Instead, he's fished Bucky's dog tags out from under his shirt and is clutching them like a lifeline. Steve's chest twists at the sight. Tony's mouth opens, as though he's about to say something. Then he shuts it again, gaze flickering behind his glasses. Once again, Steve wishes he could've had a chance to know him before all this. That way, at the very least, he might have some chance of figuring out how bad things are going. His distinct impression is that right now, Tony's not being very Tony at all.

The car finally pulls over at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that looks like it might be nearly as old as Steve. He doesn't wait for the driver to open the door, simply gets out on his own, turns around to see if Tony needs any help. However much he's gotten better, Tony's still not at anywhere near full physical strength, and sometimes he'll get dizzy over absolutely nothing. Tony looks back at him from his corner of the car, eyes wide and frightened behind his glasses. "You comin'?" Steve asks.

Tony shrugs, looks away. "Maybe it should just be you this time," he says. "I mean, you actually know her. She actually knows you. I'm just some. Some." He makes a series of gesticulations that look oddly fragile. His wrists are still too skinny. "Some stranger who's trying to muscle into her family because I'm too big a mess to even..." He trails off, runs a hand over his mouth before grasping and clutching the dog tags all over again.

"That's baloney." Steve steps a foot back inside the car, reaches out and carefully unwinds Tony's fingers from around the too-sharp little pieces of metal. "She'll love you," he says. "I told you about her, remember? And I know Buck did too. She'll love you, and you'll love her. It'll be great. You got nothin' to worry about." He wraps Tony's hand in his own and tugs. "C'mon, now."

Tony looks at him for a moment, looks away before looking at him again. His shoulder slump and his lips purse, and then he lets himself be pulled out of the car and onto the curb. Even then, he stands there uncertainly, shifting from foot to foot, hands fluttering aimlessly. He's biting his bottom lip, and Steve can't help but think that maybe this really is too soon, maybe Tony isn't ready to be out among strangers. Steve still remembers the Tony from the helicarrier, the Tony he's watched footage of, self-assured, arrogantly charming, larger than life. That is not the person who's standing next to him right now. Still, Evie isn't a stranger. Evie is family, to them both. Steve's pretty darn sure she'll forgive Bucky's Anthony pretty much anything. Steve leans in, wraps Tony up in a quick half-hug, and doesn't kiss his temple, because Tony _is_ well enough now that that's inappropriate. "Steve?" Tony asks, still so painfully uncertain.

"You'll do just fine," Steve tells him. Then, with a hand on the small of Tony's back, he steers them into the restaurant, gives the waitress their reservation. "Evie's always late, by the way," he adds as he slides into the booth and pats the seat next to him. Tony shuffles in, shoulders still hunched enough that Steve can't help but worry as he pushes in close to Steve's side. Carefully, Steve wraps his arm back around Tony, lets him get the comfort Steve knows, by now, Tony doesn't know how to ask for. Steve feels like an asshole for it, but he has read the few portions of Howard's Tony-notes that Bruce has showed him. And as wrong as part of him thinks that was, he also isn't sure how long it would've taken him to understand why Tony sometimes acts the way he does without reading those. And Steve still doesn't understand, not really, just knows enough facts to work with what's there. Sometimes he can't help but try to imagine what it might be like to grow up full of emotion, but with human interaction as a distant fourth or fifth language, with other people's emotions something incomprehensible, with contact something that's more difficult than advanced science. Tony's learnt to get what he needs in his own ways, but even those ways are still halfway smashed by the after effects of the bond loss. Half his attempts at contact are clumsier than a three-legged puppy. It shouldn't be endearing. It should be heart-rending. It kind of is both. "She was late for her first day of school," Steve says, catching Tony's hands before he can start to tear up the napkin on the table in front of them. "She was late for her first dance. She would've been late for Becky's wedding if Charlie hadn't been herding her like a collie. She might be here ten, fifteen minutes from now if we're lucky. Probably more like a half hour."

Tony flashes him an odd, little smile, shifts under the weight of Steve's thick upper arm. "It's called being fashionably late," he says. "It's an art form. Clearly one you haven't mastered yet, Mr. Get-out-of-that-shower-before-I-come-drag-you-out-we're-late. Maybe she'll be all right after all."

Steve flashes him a quick smile. Somehow, he's uncertain. It's always, oddly, harder to figure out how to support Tony in his brief bursts of confidence than how to comfort him when he's falling apart. "Evie's swell," he says. "Absolutely splendid. She'll tease the heck out of you, but she's--"

Tony flashes him an unsure grin. "Good people?" he suggests.

Steve bites back a laugh. "Good people," he agrees, the term sitting oddly in his mouth, but this is Tony's world, Tony's time. He'll take his word for it. "She was late for one of her own final exams from middle school, must've been around nineteen forty or something. Had to re-do it because it was over before she showed. I swear, Bucky screamed at her for a solid hour, had no voice left after. She just told him she hadn't really studied properly anyway and that having a few extra months was a good solution for everyone involved."

Tony sits up the tiniest bit straighter. "I did that in the seventh grade," he says. "They were going to move me straight to high school, but I had a crush on my teacher, and she didn't teach high school. So I didn't show up for the first exam, and the second one, I wrote in Star Wars quotes for the answers." He pauses a moment, something like a pout pulling at his face. "They put me in the ninth grade anyway, made me re-retake the test when I was supposed to be having summer holidays. Cost me my Jarvacation." At Steve's confused grimace, he grins. "Vacation with Jarvis and Anna, usually to England. Not JARVIS Jarvis, you know. I didn't invent JARVIS until later. The first Jarvis. Edwin Jarvis. Howard's butler. Anna was his wife. Every summer they got two weeks off, and I got to join them in England for one of them. I did get the mamacation, at least. Where I'd go with Mamá to Spain. I think Aunt Peggy went with us that year. It was nice. My tías were a pain in the ass, but Spain was nice."

Steve blinks, unused to sentences of that length and that level of confusion from Tony. He shrugs it off, tries not to wonder how old Tony must've been in this story. "I've never been to Spain," he says, still not quite done processing Tony's words. Then, "Maybe we should order. Can't be that long till she's here." He raises his hand, tries to signal one of the waiters, though he has no idea whether he's doing it right. He hasn't exactly spent a lot of time in restaurants in his life.

"You should go some day," Tony says. "It's beautiful. And I have a few properties over there, so it's not like you'd have to pay." He makes a quick, imperative hand gesture, and a moment later a waitress is right there. Steve would like to think that he's the one who managed to catch the girl's attention, but he's pretty sure he'd be wrong. "What does Evelyn like?" Tony asks.

Steve shrugs. "Anything that isn't Bucky's lamb stew," he says.

Tony's face goes through a series of expressions that makes Steve think that either Tony has tasted Bucky's lamb stew and has strong feelings about it, or that he's never tasted it and knows he never will and is on the verge of breaking down about it. Steve tightens his arm around Tony's shoulders. Tony leans into him again, although Steve's pretty sure the movement would be barely perceptible to someone watching from the outside. Then he flashes a wide, toothy smile at the waitress and rattles something off in Italian that is way too fast for Steve to keep up, and Steve can, seriously he _can_ , communicate in Italian.

"Sorry, dude," the waitress says, and Steve feels his own face tuck into a frown at the tone. He may never have worked in a restaurant, or spent a lot of time in them, but he doesn't need that to know basic etiquette, and this girl clearly doesn't have the first clue about the meaning of that word. "I don't actually speak Italian," the waitress continues. "I just work here."

Tony frowns, and Steve can see the way he looks her over, takes in her features and coloring. Then he speaks again. Rapid-fire, less musical than Italian but still oddly familiar.

This time, the girl grins. She speaks back in what's probably the same language, although not quite as quick and slightly flatter, as if she's got fewer sounds at her disposal. The two of them speak back and forth, the girl jots something down on her notepad before actually leaning in to exchange cheek kisses with Tony before she disappears again.

Steve blinks. "What was that?" he asks.

Tony rolls his eyes. "Mexican waitress in an Italian restaurant getting annoyed by the customers who assume she speaks Italian. She thought my Peninsular Spanish was beautiful, though, forgave my Italian, and promised to ask the chef to make his own favorite dishes. Places like this, giving the chef free rein is usually the way to go."

"How many languages do you actually speak?" Steve asks, frowning, still kind of overwhelmed by the rapid-fire incomprehensible words that rolled over him moments ago.

Tony shrugs, starts to literally count on his fingers. He sighs loudly at the incredulous look Steve's probably displaying. "Hey, Irish boy," he says. "Do you even speak Irish?"

"Beag," he says.

"Tá mé tógtha," Tony says. "More than most Irish Americans manage. Here's the thing, though. You are Irish American. I am German Italian Spanish Welsh American with an Irish American soulmate. How many languages does that make?"

"You learnt Irish for Bucky?" Steve asks.

Tony actually darn near blushes, comes as close as Steve has ever seen him anyway.

"That's six languages," Steve says, deciding not to press the teasing more.

"Add in Japanese, Mandarin, French and a couple different programming languages and you've about got it." He raises his eyebrows at whatever expression Steve's wearing. Probably an incredulous one, if it mirrors the way Steve's feeling. "What?" Tony asks. "It was lack of interest, not lack of talent, that kept me out of the humanics departments. In some other life, I'm a brilliant and very bored linguist. I'm a genius, remember?"

Steve can't help but smile at that, and that is somehow confusing and reassuring all at once, because when he first met Tony, he would've hated any sign of bragging. He truly did want to hit Tony back on the helicarrier at the 'genius billionaire playboy philanthropist' line. He still cringes at the thought of that, of telling Tony that Bucky was worth ten of him when Tony and Bucky are really two sides of the same coin, when Tony is so much more than Steve could've ever imagined back then. Holding that up against the strange pride and joy Steve feels to hear Tony brag now, when it's suddenly become such a rare thing... Sometimes he's not sure which one of them has changed the most since then. "I do remember," he says.

"Stevie," someone calls, and Steve looks up to see a tiny, wizened old lady running towards him. "Stevie," she calls again, dropping into the bench across from them. "I can't believe you're really here."

Steve blinks, feels suddenly a million years old, and like he's dropped right into a world that's not his all over again. "Evie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beag - a little  
> Tá mé tógtha - I'm impressed  
> At least that's what Google tells me. Probably wrong, but... *shrugs* Best I can do.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone for leaving kudos, for subscribing and bookmarking, and especially for all the comments. The questions and speculations are fuels on my fire. Never fails to make me smile.


	10. Chapter 10

Evie leans across the table, kisses Steve's cheek. She's still tiny, even shorter than Steve was before the serum. Her grey eyes are as alive as they ever were, her wrinkled face still just as animated and it feels so wrong. Evie is more than eight years younger than him, and now she's an old woman while, for all intents and purposes, Steve is still only twenty-seven. Twenty-eight, maybe. He's kind of lost track of the chronology. "Stevie," she says again. "It's so good to see you. You look." She flashes a grin that is so Evie it would've knocked his knees out from beneath him if he weren't already sitting. "You look incredible," she says finally. "I think more people woulda understood my crush if they'd seen you like this."

Steve valiantly attempts to fight down his blush, but it feels like it makes it through anyway. Darn Irish complexion. "You look good too," he says.

She grins back at him. "I know," she says. "I got a date tonight, actually. Ol' dirtbag from the retirement home down the street. Don' really like 'im, but hey, free dinner, you know?"

Her Brooklyn is still so thick, even after all these years, that Steve can't help but smile. "You're still all about the free dinners, huh?"

Evie smiles at him, and he can still see the traces of how beautiful she must've been at some point in between the awkward teenager he knew and the old woman he's seeing now. Even now, at eighty-five years old, she's so vibrantly alive, it's difficult to look away. "Always all 'bout the free dinners. Why'dya think I took you up on the invite?"

"You're still the same little brat, aincha?" Steve asks. Under his arm, Tony presses closer, and Steve takes a breath, pulling himself back into the present. He gives Tony's shoulder a quick squeeze before pulling his arm back. "Tony," he says. "This is Evie Barnes. Evie, this is Tony." He stops a moment, coughs, feels suddenly supremely awkward. "Bucky's Anthony."

Evie looks at Tony, and her eyes, so like Bucky's, light up. "Dear me," she says. "You look exactly like he always said you would."

Tony's smile is almost demure. "He told me about you," he says. "When I." He stops, blinks, leans back into the back padding of the booth, presses close enough to push his shoulder against Steve's.

"Yeah," Evie says. "Stevie told me about that part. Never thought Bucky's sci-fi zines would actually be right about anything, but here you are." The smile on her face is somehow broad and gentle all at once. "And I am very happy my dear brother saw fit to tell you about me. Can't really be what you expected, though. I mean, I ain't really a silly sixteen-year-old anymore."

Tony shakes his head. "He never said you were silly," he says. "He just. He told me all these stories. Steve does too. They both love you to death. It's really intimidating, actually." And through the glasses, Steve catches that flash of insecurity again. Tony does have people who love him to death, but Steve isn't sure he ever actually realizes it. What Steve is fairly sure of is that Tony's never going to feel that he deserves to matter to someone that someone else loves to death.

Evie shrugs, the move so loose and relaxed it makes her look decades younger than she actually is. "Love 'em too," she says. "They were my everything." Suddenly, the joy seems to bleed out of her, and she looks every inch the broken down old woman. "And then they were gone." Steve swallows, doesn't know what to do with himself suddenly, and when Tony's hand closes tight around his wrist, he isn't sure who's comforting who. "I named my boy James Steven, you know," she says, grey eyes cloudy with tears. "Then he went and got himself killed in 'Nam. What kinda family traditions do we have here anyway?"

Steve reaches his free hand across the table, finds her small, wrinkled hand and cradles it in his own. "I'm so sorry," he says.

Her smile, this time, is a dim, weak little thing. "Nothin' you coulda done, Stevie," she says. "You were busy hangin' out in an iceberg somewhere, weren't you?" Despite the failed humor, though, her tone really does not hold any blame or condemnation, and Steve is beyond grateful for that. He doesn't know what he'd have done with another tally against him. "Now," she says, visibly pulling herself out of the melancholy. "How are you, Anthony? I hear you got a real workin' AI up in that big, ugly Tower of yours."

Tony looks at her, utterly silent, for long moments. Then, without warning, his bottom lip begins to quiver and Steve can almost literally sense the incoming breakdown. Without pausing to think, he wraps his arm back around Tony's shoulder, pulls Tony close to his side. "I tried to save him," Tony manages, voice choked. "I tried, I promise. I just. I." And just like that, he falls into the kind of scratched record repetition Steve's thought they were past. Without speaking, he grips Tony's shoulder, turns him further until his face is buried in the junction between Steve's shoulder and neck, words muffled, tears unseen, even as Steve feels the burning brand of every single one of them.

"Bond loss," Steve says, soft as he can, trying to appeal to Evie's compassion. He isn't sure what Tony's going to do if he thinks, for even a second, that Evie dislikes him or judges him. He is sure he doesn't want to find out. "Maybe we shoulda waited. Not sure he was ready for this yet."

Evie nods with a kind of patient understanding that the Evie Steve once knew never could've even grasped the concept of. "I never met my soulmate," she says. "But I felt him die. Twelve years ago now. I'd felt him my entire life and then he was just gone. I can't imagine what it musta been like for Anthony. I mean, it musta been like being born in a famine, constantly hungry. Then, for a few weeks, you get to eat until you're fit to burst, and then it's taken away. Just. Worse. I don't even. I wish I'd made the connection sooner, Stevie, I really do. If I'd dreamt for even a second that Tony Stark... If I'd known and I'd thought he'd wanna take a minute out of his day to spend time with me, I woulda been there for him, always, every stepathe way. I promise. I--"

Steve shifts Tony around until he's got a hand free and can reach out and grasp Evie's wizened one again. "I believe you, Sweetheart," he says, fighting to keep his voice steady. "I believe you. But it's... Tony ain't a Brooklyn kid. He's... Even if you'da known, Howard might not'a let you get to him. You can't blame yourself over this."

"I can, though," Evie says, and she sounds choked now, voice shaky, and for the first time since she showed up, she sounds her age. "Jamie died when Anthony was still just a kid. I never thought to look for him because, well, who ever heard of a soulmate was born after his other soul half died? If I'd thought about it more, though... Steve, I ain't dumb. I went to college, you know. Got a master's to show for it. You know how rare that was with us Brooklyn kids. You know how rare that was for girls. I'm not stupid. I may not be a genius, but I shoulda known. I shoulda been there for that kid. What must it'a been like, growin' up like that, with your soulmate twenty-five years dead and no link to speak of?"

Against his side, Tony lets out a sob, and Steve tightens his arm around him and wishes he'd waited another few months, at least. None of them are ready for this. Tony and Evie sure as heck aren't ready for each other, and this is all going to heck in a hand basket, or whatever it is they say these days, and Steve doesn't have the first clue how to salvage the situation. Steve runs a careful hand up and down Tony's spine, uses the other to brush the newly cut hair out of his face, tries to hold the other man together as best as he can. "No one knows what to do with a situation like this," he says finally. "Nothin' like this has ever been observed before. You never looked for Anthony, especially in the seventies, because you figured Anthony probably felt as distant towards Bucky as you felt towards your soulmate, and anyway, Buck had been dead decades. Tony's case is unique. No one coulda guessed a thing 'bout it, Eve, and you can't blame yourself for something you could'n'a possibly known." He has to trust that that's enough to give to Evie right now because as much as Steve loves her, as much as he doesn't want her to feel guilty about this, the one person who really needs him right at this very second is Tony. Steve lets go of his inhibitions, just for a moment, presses a kiss to the top of Tony's head, pulling him as close as could possibly be deemed decent in public. "You're doin' all right, Doll," he whispers. "No one blames you. You're doin' jus' fine. C'mon Tony, take a breath. It's gonna be fine. No one coulda saved Buck. No one blames you. You did jus' fine."

Evie's eyes are soft with sympathy when she looks at him. "He's lucky to have you," she says. "Strange kinda symmetry there. Bucky took cara you, you take cara Anthony." She falls silent for a moment. "Take him home. He needs his rest. Don't look well to me." She puts on a strange lopsided smile that almost makes her look sad. "Pay the bill, though, wouldya? Get them to wrap it up. Take it home. He could use some meat on his bones, that one. You know Buck wouldn'a let that stand."

Steve flashes her a smile that's darn near physically painful. "Thanks, Evie."

She leans across the table, kisses his cheek. "Take cara him," she says. "Buck woulda wanted ya to." Then she winks at him, long and saucy, the way she had decades ago, more than half a century ago, when someone was saying something obscene. "You remember Matthew twenty-two twenty-four, doncha Stevie?"

Steve feels his eyes widen as he recognizes that bit of scripture, feels his cheeks heat up. "Evie," he protests.

She grins at him, even though her eyes are still unbearably full of pain that's older, goes much deeper, than the scraped knees Steve once, a long time ago, used to help soothe. "I'll keep in touch, Stevie. I'd lovta talkta him once he's better."

Steve nods, tries not to think about her words of a few moments ago as she struggles her way back to her feet and leaves. A moment later, he manages to get a hold of their waitress again, orders the food to go and pays with one of those weird plastic cards Tony's given him, and then it's right back home to the Tower.

Tony crawls into Steve's lap almost the moment they are both back in the car, curling up and clinging, and Steve so carefully does not think of Matthew 22;24 for even one moment. Yeah, sure, the Tower of Babel and the split souls of humanity, the lessons learnt, the reminder not to reach for the Heavens, it all makes sense. There are some parts of the Bible, though, that are still just utterly inappropriate, and Steve utterly refuses to even entertain those thoughts, darn you Evie. "You doin' alright?" Steve asks, raking his hand carefully through Tony's thick head of hair, making sure his nails catch on Tony's scalp because apparently that is soothing.

"Yeah," Tony says, voice soft and rough. The top of his head nudges against the underside of Steve's jaw ever so slightly, and Steve can't help but tighten his arms, and something has to be really wrong with him here, so darn wrong, because nothing, no one, has ever felt better in his arms. He doesn't even need anything beyond this, doesn't need... any of all that stuff he's never had anyway. Just, so long as Tony's there, he can get through this new century, can survive the transition, all the things he doesn't understand. The simple matter of fact is that so long as Tony's here, Steve will eventually be all right. Steve's spent his entire life being taken care of while pretending to be some kind of big guy who needed no one, when that was the furthest thing from the truth. Perhaps, now, it's finally his turn to be the nurturer, the one who keeps someone else together and alive, and he's kind of looking forward to that. "Yeah," Tony says. "M'okay. What's Matthew twenty-two twenty-four? Never really took the time to read the Bible."

Steve feels the flush spread over his face again. "Never mi--"

His phone beeps, and then Tony's phone plays out some kind of weird melody and Tony suddenly looks completely all right, completely put together. "Avengers assemble," he says. "Except that's your line. Pick up the phone, Cap." He is pushing bracelets onto his wrists, tapping something or other into his phone. Steve lets all that go for a moment, even allows himself to let go of his worries of whether or not Iron Man is fit for duty. Bruce cleared him weeks ago, on the strict provision that he didn't go off script, whatever that means. Steve shakes his head quickly, fishes his phone out of his pocket and presses that funny green button that's really not so much a button at all as it's just a differently-colored-for-the-moment-part-of-the-screen. "Avengers assemble," he says. "And someone please bring my gear."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who's taken the time to leave kudos, to subscribe and bookmark, and especially for commenting. Your comments always put big smiles on my face and they really do mean more than you realise.
> 
> Also, I've made the decision not to put the Bible verse in here. You're in Tony's shoes. Suck it up or look it up ;) Nothing in particular is meant by it, except Evie still being a baby sister and wanting to make Steve as red as a tomato.


	11. Chapter 11

Steve's ripping off his cowl as he runs, heart stuck somewhere in his throat as he pushes his post-Serum muscles as hard as he has in any battle so far. After what feels like an impossible, painful amount of time, he rushes into the Tower's emergency room and stops short behind the glass doors. He has absolutely no idea what it is Bruce is doing to Tony, except that the IV is back in and several bags of something-or-other is apparently making its dribbling path down Tony's veins. Tony himself, shit, Tony is white as a sheet, as bad as when he just got back from the forties. His face is pale as paper, his lips a slash of pink and his eyelids black, fluttering butterflies, and however good a darn portrait he might make right now, all Steve wants is for him to be okay, darn it all. He pushes open the door, presses inside, and he's still wearing his uniform, cowl clenched in his hand, as he stares at Tony, so impossibly still on that operating table. "What's going on, Bruce?" he asks.

Bruce spares a bare second to look up at him before his attention returns to Tony. "Right now," he says. "I need you not to talk, not to speak or move or distract me in any way, or we're going to lose them," he says. Then he returns to looking at monitors and injecting God-knows-what into Tony's IV. "Fuck," he mutters under his breath. "Dear God please, please." He injects something else into the IV, turns his head halfway round to look straight at Steve. His eyes are green. "Cap, could you please leave? Right now. I do not need a distraction right now."

Steve grits his teeth, and part of him wants to run out of here. He does not have the kind of twisted courage it takes to stick around when Bruce doesn't want him to; only Tony does. "Sure," he manages, makes his way back towards the doors. "Bruce, what's wrong with him?"

"He's going to have to tell you himself," Bruce says. "If he chooses to. Just, please, get the hell out of here."

Steve wants to stay, to ask more, but Bruce's face is creased with worry and his eyes are green as poison and all Steve can possibly do in this situation is be in the way. He lets himself be herded out of the room, drops into the plastic seat next to Barton. "You okay?" he asks, and he's kind of ashamed by how little he cares. At least talking will be a distraction from the way his throat feels tight and his hands threaten to shake.

"Think I sprained my ankle," Barton says. "I was just going to go get some bandages or something, but then Banner damn near bit my head off, and I do not want to have to deal with that, so Hawkeye's waiting out here until Banner's less of a time bomb."

"I think one of those S.H.I.E.L.D. folders said talking about yourself in the third person is a bad sign," Steve says.

Barton shrugs, cocking an eyebrow as he does so. "At least I didn't have a building dropped on me," he says. "I just sprained my ankle because the guy who was supposed to catch me when I fall and all that romanticized bullshit was getting a building dropped on him when I took the long walk off a short pier."

Steve frowns. "I have no idea what you're saying," he says.

Barton frowns at him. "I jumped. Iron Man didn't catch me because falling building. Iron Man very injured. Hawkeye, sprained ankle. Entiendes, amigo?"

Steve runs a hand over his face. "Am I the only one on this team who doesn't speak Spanish?"

Barton takes a moment to frown, then shrugs. "Probably," he says. Then he limps out of his chair. "Fuck this," he says. "Waiting lines in public hospitals are better. I'm just gonna get Nat to wrap it."

***

It's nearly two weeks before Tony's allowed to leave the med bay, and neither he nor Bruce will tell Steve what the fuck's going on. Tony has a seizure at some point somewhere half the way through, but rather than treat like just another thing that happens, the way he has so far, Bruce darn near panics about it, praying out loud to about five different deities while he shoots God knows what down the IV and mutters to Tony so softly even Steve can't pick it up.

When Bruce finally discharges Tony, it's a halfway kind of thing where he's out of the med bay but not allowed to leave his bed except to use the toilet or the shower. Steve falls into old habits so fast it's probably ridiculous. He brings Tony's food, supports his slow, bambi-esque steps when he needs the bathroom, makes himself comfortable watching Tony's playlist of all-time-great movies with him on the bedroom television.

"You all right?" Steve asks. It's October, and the stress seems to really be getting to Tony's body, never mind that Steve really doesn't know what went wrong during the battle, other than the whole building falling on top of him thing. He still doesn't know what the hell the injury was, just knows that he doesn't know how to deal with Tony injured at all.

"Sure, all right," Tony says, and he's kind of slurring his words again. He's holding one of his Starkpads, tapping things into it faster than Steve could possibly follow even if he were to try. "Just bored out of my fucking skull." The grin he flashes Steve is so obviously fake it makes something inside Steve grind. His eyes are as lost as they were months ago, and Steve feels something inside himself crack at the sight of that backslide.

Steve somehow manages to call a grin into life on his own face even as he takes in Tony's sunken cheeks, the dark circles under his eyes, the skinniness of his wrists. Darn, it can't go on like this. "Stay here," Steve says, already mapping out the kind of meals he can make within thirty minutes.

"I'm on bed rest, Cap," Tony says, rolling his eyes. "Where am I going to go?" With that, he goes right back to his tablet, fingers moving here and there, lightning fast, on what still looks, to Steve, like a strange piece of glass. "Tuck me in, will you?" The leer looks kind of strange on his too-pale face, but there's still a strange kind of swoop in Steve's stomach that he can't even begin to understand, doesn't _want_ to understand because how much more inappropriate can you get? Bucky is practically his brother, and Steve can't, won't, he just can't, heck. Somehow, he manages to flash Tony a smile and gets off his chair. He reaches out, carefully tucks the sheets and blankets down around the too-thin too-cold contours of Tony's body. "Thanks, Cap," Tony says, and he sounds so sleepy and so childish all of a sudden. Something in the pit of Steve's stomach clenches. He bends down, presses a soft, careful peck against Tony's cheek before walking back out the door.

He doesn't like walking out. He doesn't like leaving Tony alone at all. He doesn't understand the situation, knows all too well that he's missing at least one enormous piece of the puzzle that is Tony right now, and that worries him so much, because he doesn't know where he's got Tony, what Tony might end up doing. It scares him like the Red Skull and Loki and the Cosmic Cube never did, because Tony is already such a wildcard. Because Tony matters so much more, and as dumb as it sounds, without even trying, Tony is taking care of Steve just as much as Steve is trying, daily, to take care of him. Just by being there, by linking Steve to this time, grounding him, needing him. He can't push, though. Tony's too fragile right now; Steve has no idea what might break him completely all over again, and that's the last thing he wants. He pulls himself out of his own head, pushes his worry down for right now. All he can do, right now, is be there and make sure Tony's most basic needs are at least fulfilled. Right now, that means food. He goes through the fridge, glancing into leftover takeaway containers and the general stock things and the shelf full of fruits and vegetables everyone who is not Tony has insisted must always be there.

Steve is not a good cook. He really isn't. When he was a kid and his ma worked long shifts, he ate with the Barneses. After Ma died and Steve and Bucky had found a place together, Bucky was the resident cook, almost without exception, mostly because Bucky had really good taste buds and categorically denied eating anything Steve had cooked. Still, at least he doesn't burn eggs, which is apparently a thing that happens whenever Tony's let loose in the kitchen. Not that that's an option right now anyway, what with the bed rest and everything, and... Steve really needs to stop stalling.

He takes a pot, throws in some rice somethingorother that mostly looks like really white pasta, throws in some canned tomatoes and whatever vegetables seem like they might work, and the chicken somethingorother from another one of the leftover containers. Hopefully he can season it all into not tasting too bad. He waits somewhat impatiently for it all to heat and for the vegetables to properly cook, adds in the spices, and then. Well, darn, the pasta or whatever has pretty much fallen apart and the taste is kind of weird but. Well, it's edible. He's pretty sure it is, anyway. Bucky would tell him to throw it out if it was the beginning of the month and they had enough money for that kind of waste, but Bucky also isn't here to make a better alternative. Steve ladles the whatever it is into a bowl, picks up a bottle of juice and returns to the master bedroom. His belly goes tight with worry for a second, the way it always seems to at the moment, doesn't ease up until he's all the way in the room and Tony's still there, unharmed, utterly focused on his tablet. Steve lets out a breath before walking over, sitting down on the edge of the bed and handing over the bowl of whatever and the bottle of juice.

Tony takes it out of his hand absentmindedly, somehow manages to juggle spoon and bowl and juice and tablet without making a mess. "Tastes weird," he says, around the time he's two thirds through the bowl.

"Sorry," Steve says. "Sadly, the Serum didn't enhance my cooking abilities."

Tony flashes him a quick grin. "You know," he says. "Since Jarvis died, I think I can probably count the number of people who've cooked for me without me paying them on one hand." He frowns. "Technically, Howard was paying Jarvis, but."

Since he's met Tony, Steve's felt that sensation of his heart cracking and his guts tying into sharp knots way too often, and right now it's sweeping through him all over again. And heck, what do you even say to something like that? "Wish I coulda done better," he says.

Tony shrugs. Flashes him a tiny smile. He finishes his food in another couple of spoonfuls, deposits the bowl and spoon and drinks down his juice before pulling his covers up higher, trying to cover more of his body. Then he returns to his tablet, the intense look taking his face right back over. "You did just fine," he says absentmindedly. "It tasted kinda nice."

Steve carefully doesn't snort at the lie, reaches over to tuck the covers down closer to Tony's body. Mostly, he's just glad to see Tony eating. Anything to combat that terrible gauntness that makes him worry his darn head off every time he sees it. "Watcha workin' on?"

Tony glances up at him for the barest moment before returning his attention to the tablet. "Time machine," he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the kudos, subscriptions and bookmarks, and especially for the comments. They mean more to mean than I can say.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As interesting as it would be to get into the science of this whole thing, I have deliberately decided not to, because the story is written from Steve's point of view and Steve has canonically showed that he is more interested in _whether_ something scientific works than _how_ it works, plus in this story he has admitted to being better with languages and arts and science and math. This, coupled with the fact that his knowledge of science is grounded in a nineteen-thirties high school education, which doesn't give much foundation, has made me choose to skim over the theories, because they'd go over Steve's head (Steve isn't stupid, just not this kind of smart) and he's probably not really listening at this point anyway except when Tony slows down to explain something very slowly and basically (so, not often). Just to let everyone know the reasoning behind the lack of in-depth explanation.

"Time machine?"

"Mmhmm," Tony says. "Time machine." He casts Steve another look before returning to the tablet. He lets out a loud groan. "JARVIS, this screen is driving me crazy. It's so slow. I need you to fabricate holo projectors that fit the dimensions of this room. And call that... I've got a construction crew on retainer, right?"

"You do, Sir," JARVIS says.

"Get them to come here and install it once you're done fabricating," Tony says. Then, once again, he returns his gaze to the too-small screen.

"Time travel?" Steve asks again.

"Well, obviously it can be done," Tony says. "I already took the plunge, didn't I? Layman's terms, the challenge is controlling the where and when I land, and finding a way to replicate my last return trip, so I don't have to go through space and then back home, because, you know, not as fond of space as I used to be. And, of course, I have to find out how to stabilize it and control it from the other side. Make sure I can bring back a passenger."

Steve blinks, suddenly painfully alert. "You want to bring Bucky here," he says, and he can feel the way his pulse picks up speed, the way painful hope begins to churn through him. "But how?" he asks. "I thought you couldn't change the timeline?"

Tony finally puts his tablet down, looks at Steve with his full attention, eyes brighter than Steve thinks he's ever seem them, and something pulses at the sight, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, deep and aching. Something he's never going to let himself examine, let alone feel again. "You're right," Tony says. "I mean, just think about it. How many times did James save your ass during the War? He's the one who got you out of chorus-girling in the first place. Taking him out of the equation before all of that might've gotten you killed, and I'm selfishly aware that both Howard and my abuelo were in some of the major European cities that would've been hit by the Valkyrie if you hadn't stopped it. I kind of like the fact that I was born, so... There's even a pretty big chance that James falling helped motivate you before your fight with Red Skull, and God only knows what would've happened if you hadn't managed to take him out of the game. That means there's really only a few seconds' window where it's likely that it's possible to extract him at all." Tony's Adam's apple bobs on a swallow. "Maybe he had to fall. Doesn't mean he has to hit the ground."

Steve frowns. "He'd have to be able to fl--" He feels his own eyes widen. "Iron Man."

Tony nods, a wide grin stretching his face, making him seem somehow younger in his enthusiasm, and more solid, more real, with the lines around his eyes deepening. Even with his barely maintained beard and messy hair, he looks vibrant, and Steve clenches down on that swoop before it can reach all the way through him. "Iron Man," Tony agrees.

***

"No," Bruce says, about a week and a half later, when Tony's got far enough in his theories to invite him up to share. Jane and a man named Erik Selvig are there as well, through the holographic screens, watching and listening and, Steve's pretty sure, taking notes. "No, Tony, absolutely not. You're still on bed rest. Even if we can find a big enough energy source--"

"Would be so much easier if Thor hadn't taken the Tesseract to Asgard," Tony interjects.

"--there is no way in hell you are getting near the power tools you'd need to build the mechanics. And there is absolutely no way you are going through an untested time portal, or even getting in the Iron Man suit." Bruce is all but yelling now, skin taking on a vague, greenish tint. "This isn't just about you, and you do not get to risk your life like that. This is about--"

"That's what I'm doing!" Tony really is yelling, and that's not something Steve's ever really heard before. Screaming, yes, when the nightmares or the pain of the bond loss get too bad. In the helicarrier, when he'd gotten angry, his voice had gone low, more mocking by the minute. This, this isn't even anger, this sound, it's utter desperation, and Steve has a feeling that Tony's not doing nearly as well as he's managed to make everyone, Steve included, think. "That's _all_ I think about, Bruce. I have to do this. I have to." He stops, squeezes his eyes shut. He presses the heel of his left hand against the bridge of his nose, the metal of his wrist cuff digging into his skin. With the other hand, he is drumming Bucky's dog tags against the casing of the arc reactor, exposed through the hole he's cut out of his undershirt. "I cannot do this alone."

Jane clears her throat delicately. "Maybe we should bench the scientific discussion and call back later," she suggests.

"No," Tony says, even as Bruce says, "Yes!"

Bruce takes a deep breath, gentles his face, seems to push some of the green back from his features. "Listen," he says, and his voice is softer now, far kinder. "I didn't know Barnes. Steve did. Ask him if Bucky would've wanted you to do this. If he's anything like I'd imagine any soulmate of yours to be, the answer should be a resounding 'no'."

Steve swallows, all too aware, all over again, that there's something he's missing, something they're not telling him, something vitally important. But he cannot push, he cannot do anything to make the situation worse than it already is, push Tony closer to the cliff's edge he's apparently just barely still balanced on. And it's difficult, so darn difficult because pushing has always been what he does, always been part of who he is. It feels so wrong not to, and sometimes he can't help but wonder if maybe he shouldn't follow his instincts after all, push and push until Tony shatters again, and then pick the pieces back up afterwards. He isn't sure it could be worse than this.

Tony's eyes flick to Steve for a moment before he looks away again. He turns back to Bruce. "You need to let me do it," he says, voice cracking. "I _need_ to do this. I can't..." He pauses, breath hitching. "Bruce, I _can't_."

The last of the green drains out of Bruce's eyes and skin. He sighs, and his eyes fill up with sympathy so deep it only serves to make Steve that much more frightened of what the heck it is that's going on. "I need to talk to Tony," he says to the room at large. "Alone."

The feeds to Jane and Selvig cut, at least that what Steve thinks it's called. Steve turns his head, tries to catch Tony's eyes, find out if he's wanted here or not. Tony's eyes are squeezed shut and for long moments, he doesn't so much as move. Then he gestures weakly towards the door, and Steve nods, swallows down the lump in his throat, and leaves the room.

Barton's standing in the kitchen, making a sandwich. He's been spending more and more time on the upper floors lately, and usually Steve doesn't mind, but his mind is churning and his chest feels too tight and he's not at all sure he's up for company right now. Luckily, for all his brashness and all his usual lack of tact, Barton seems to realize that right now is not the time. Rather than throwing out a quip or a joke, he simply makes an extra sandwich, puts it on the plate and slides it across the kitchen bar to Steve. Steve picks it up, takes an absentminded bite, and puts it back down, stomach knotted too tight for it to actually be appetizing. He forces himself to chew and swallow despite his rising nausea.

He has no idea how much time passes before Barton finally can't contain himself anymore, "So, what'd you do to get kicked out?" he asks. "Did they get tired of you bringing down the average IQ of the room to something approaching human levels?"

Steve shoots him a look, hoping against hope that he'll be able to convey his disapproval without having to actually speak.

"Hey, hey." Barton says, holding up his hands. "That can't possibly have been bad enough to earn me a Captain America is Disappointed in You stare."

Steve frowns. "I don't have a Captain America is Disappointed in You stare," he says. "There's no such thing as a Captain America is Disappointed in You stare."

"So is," Barton says. "There's also a Captain America is Going to Beat You Up pout, but I'm pretty sure Stark's the only one who's perfected it."

"You should leave Tony alone," Steve says, frowning at Barton. "He really isn't feeling too well at the moment."

Barton snorts. "And that, right there, is why the pout is effective. You're like a momma bear with him. He isn't going to get better if you keep playing the crutch."

Steve bites his lip, doesn't snap, doesn't start giving away stuff Tony might not want him to in an attempt to make Barton understand and give up. It's a near thing, though. He's already wound up, and part of him just wants to snap and yell and provoke a fight. Once upon a time, it's what he'd have done, back before his strength meant that violent outbursts would get more than him in trouble. 

"What's going on in there anyway?" Barton asks. "Banner's in there all the time, and I know I'm not the only one getting kicked out for those 'medical exams' or whatever." He waits a moment, raises an eyebrow. "Stark's paranoid as fuck, by the way. I tried to listen through the vents a couple of days ago. Except when you get close enough, they actually heat up." He holds up his hand, showing off a shiny, pink burn.

"I don't think it counts as paranoia when someone _is_ trying to spy on you," Steve says.

"Yeah, well," Barton grumbles. "I just want to know what's actually going on in my own team. Is it too much to ask to actually know where I stand with everyone before we get called out again?"

Before Steve figures out a response, the door to Tony's room slams open and Tony staggers out, legs as weak as a baby gazelle's after weeks of bed rest. Steve's out of the chair before he's even aware of what he's doing, sandwich abandoned on the kitchen bar. What feels like barely a second later, he's got his hands on Tony's waist, supporting him as his knees buckle beneath him.

Bruce walks up behind them, and Steve already kind of wants to hit him before he even opens his mouth. "You're on bed rest, Tony," Bruce says again, and it's a real effort not to strike out, never mind that Bruce hulking out in response would just make everything worse. Instead, he focuses on keeping Tony upright, and when that proves futile, picks him up.

"You're in my bedroom," Tony says into Steve's neck. "He's in my bedroom. If I can't storm out, he has to leave." His hands have found Steve's shoulders, fisted into his t-shirt. He sounds like a petulant child, but also like he's on the verge of cracking.

"Fine," Bruce says. "I'll leave. Once you tell me you're not going to do anything stupid."

Tony lets out a harsh breath. The first sullen tears begin to track down the column of Steve's throat, and Steve wants this situation over, wants Bruce to stop pushing, never mind the fact that pushing is exactly what he considered himself what feels like mere moments ago. "Okay," Tony manages, voice choked, as Steve pushes past Bruce into the room. "Fuck. I'll ask Rhodey. I'll. I'll ask Rhodey."

Steve doesn't give Bruce a chance to answer. He slams the door shut between them and tucks Tony carefully back into bed, letting himself drop into the chair next to him as Tony curls into himself, knees pulled to his chest and face tucked into his sweatpants. Steve keeps his own breathing carefully calm, reaches out a hand and begins to smooth Tony's hair back, slowly untangling the curls. "You wanna talk?" he asks when the sobs have evened out of Tony's breaths.

"No," Tony says. "No. I." He pauses, untucks his face for a moment. He looks over his shoulder at Steve with watery eyes, lashes clumped together. "Come here?" he asks, sounding impossibly small and unsure, and Steve moves to the edge of the bed. Tony makes grabby hands, and Steve complies without thought, kicking off his shoes and lying down, lets Tony tug him closer and pull Steve's arms around his body. "I miss--" Tony cuts himself off before saying anything else, scoots closer until his back is flush against Steve's chest. "Tell me a story?"

And so Steve does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone for the kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions and especially the comments. The speculations and remarks made me smile every single time.


	13. Chapter 13

The next week and a half pass so quick it's scary. Tony seems to be spending half his waking hours buried in his holographic screens and the other half with Bruce on conference calls with Jane and Dr. Selvig, using words Steve can't even begin to understand, like Hadron Collider and particle acceleration. Then there's something about someplace in Switzerland called CERN that Steve has never heard about, and something about how much SI has invested in said non-existent-but-apparently-existent place and pushing for a slot and Steve is so lost it's ridiculous.

Then, all of a sudden, everything's happening so fast Steve feels like he has absolutely no chance to keep up. Tony says he's got the software ready, and apparently Bruce and JARVIS have put together whatever machines need to be made. Rhodey's got leave and is going to meet their team in Switzerland. Before Steve's quite caught up with what's happening, one of Tony's private planes is mere hours away from being ready, and everyone who's going on it is packing up the last of their stuff. It doesn't even occur to Steve that anyone other than the science crew can go until Romanoff reminds him that if he plans to tag along, he should hurry up and put a bag together.

Steve stops short, comes so darn close to freezing. He's never been one to freeze, but now he has to make a choice, and it's an important one, and he has to do it fast. On the one hand, he doesn't want to leave Tony. He hasn't left Tony's side for months except to sleep, shower and make himself scarce in the gym for Bruce's medical examinations. In the past week and a bit, he hasn't even left to sleep most evenings, has spent the nights in the chair by Tony's bed because the closer this whole experiment gets, the more antsy Tony grows. He's restless and exhausted, dark rings under his eyes, wrists growing skinnier again, all manic energy and inability to focus on anything other than the project, and he's gone back to waking up with nightmares almost every night, hands stretching and voice crying out for Bucky. He's had two of what Bruce calls partial seizures, and even Steve can tell that Bruce, _and_ Tony, if not to quite the same degree, are frightened of the possibility of another 'grand mal', as Bruce calls them. As much as they used to be commonplace, Bruce now seems to think that each and every one of them might just be deadly, and it's Steve's job to talk Tony down when he wakes up at his most frantic, Steve's job to convince him to stop reaching out, to focus on the here and now and let the frayed edges of his soul rest. It feels kind of conceited to think it, but Steve doesn't know what Tony would do without him at this point, not until he's better.

On the other hand, there's Bucky. If they manage to extract him - and Steve can't help but believe they will; Tony alone is already smarter than anyone Steve's ever met, Howard included, and that's without including Bruce, Jane and Dr. Selvig - then he'll come to just like Steve did. In an unfamiliar world, where everything's strange, nothing's familiar and everything's scary. Sure, Bucky might have a leg up on him. He probably learnt a thing or two from Tony during Tony's time in the past, and his imagination for the futuristic has always been better than Steve's. But on the other hand, Bucky's tendency to come out swinging when threatened is at least as great as Steve's own, and unless Steve is misremembering completely, Bucky was armed when he fell from the train. His extraction could be a disaster, unless there's someone familiar to calm him down, and Bucky has three real links left in the world: Tony, who's on bed rest and under strict orders not to get on a plane; Evie, who could so easily frighten the heck out of him with how much she's changed. And Steve. Who really is the only viable option.

How the heck can he be in two places at once?

He can't, as much as he wants to. But while he is the only person who stands a chance of helping Bucky, it is not so with Tony. Romanoff and Barton are staying behind in the Tower, and he knows that if need be, Ms. Potts and Mr. Hogan will be at hand. Three of those people have known Tony longer than Steve has. Two of them probably still know him better than Steve does. As much as he hates the idea, by now, of entrusting Tony's care to anyone else, he needs to be able to entrust them with it.

He has to go to Switzerland.

Steve packs the bare necessities within the space of two minutes. He's an army man; that's practically slow. He lifts his duffel bag outside, takes a deep breath and strides down to Tony's bedroom to say goodbye. He knocks on the door, opens it and steps inside - he learned fairly early on that there was no reason, with Tony, to wait for an answer; if Tony is even halfway dubious about having company, he locks the door, and he is fully capable of selectively locking the door; if he doesn't want Steve there, Steve won't get in. The first sight that greets him is that of Tony standing up on shaking legs, sliding on the Iron Man homing bracelets. There's a suitcase at his feet, and he's fully dressed, even if the dress pants come with a strangely oversized sweater. Looks soft and expensive regardless. Even his beard has been shaved down to a sharp-edged perfection Steve hasn't seen on him since the helicarrier. This is not a man who plans to stay on bed rest. "Tony?" Steve asks. "What are you doing?"

Tony glances up at him, blinks once. Then he looks down himself. Something guilty flickers over his face for a moment. Then he looks up, meets Steve's gaze head-on, a defiance dancing in his eyes that is so Tony it makes Steve want to grin even though he knows he has to fight against this, figure out some way to make Tony drop this, for his own sake. Steve may not know what's going on yet, may not have known Tony before the portal, but he knows enough to know that for Tony to stick as closely to a concept like bed rest as he has, it's serious. "I'm going to CERN," Tony says finally, as though that's the obvious answer, as though he isn't ill and nothing's wrong at all.

"Tony," Steve says, and tries to think of something to say that isn't 'you're on bed rest'. That's Bruce's line and it's always done at least as much harm as good. Steve can sympathize. He never reacted well to those words either. He pauses, takes a breath even as he unconsciously steps closer to Tony. By now, they're so used to being in each other's space, Steve feels strange having conversations from across the room. "Tony," he says again. "You..." He bites the words back before he says something like 'can't'. That word has only ever been fuel to Tony's ever-burning fire. "Please don't," he says at last. "I can't. I." He stops, squeezes his eyes shut, reaches out to grasp Tony's shoulder, feel the solid muscle and bone and tendon under his palms. "I need you to be safe right now, until you're okay at least. I just." He stops once more, straightens his own back, opens his eyes back up to meet Tony's determined gaze. He has to use logic here. Logic is the only thing that ever makes Tony respond when he's beyond reason, however crazy that sounds in the confines of Steve's own head. "Do you trust Rhodey?" he asks.

Tony's head dips down to the level of Steve's chest for a moment before he picks it back up. Eyes pointed somewhere behind Steve's left shoulder, he nods. "Yes," he says.

"Do you trust the work you did on the War Machine's programming?" Steve asks.

"Yes," Tony says again. His teeth are gritted. The single syllable word sound like it's being dragged out of him by force.

"Do you trust the equipment you programmed and designed for the mission?" Steve asks.

Tony's shoulders slump. He doesn't say anything this time, just nods.

"Do you trust Bruce, Rhodey, Jane and Doctor Selvig to set it up?" Steve squeezes his hands, not enough to hurt but enough to make sure Tony's paying attention.

Another nod.

Steve bows his own head, nudges Tony's forehead with his own. "Do you trust that I care about you _and_ Bucky enough to make sure everyone does their darndest to bring him home to you?"

Tony heaves out a dry sob, eyes squeezing back shut. His hands come up to squeeze Steve's shoulders. "Yes," he all but moans.

Steve straightens up enough to press a kiss to Tony's forehead. "Let me bring him home," he says.

Tony presses forward, face pushing into the junction between Steve's shoulder and neck. His arms wind around Steve's chest, fingers pressing into the muscles shielding his shoulder blades. Another sob reverberates from Tony's mouth through Steve's whole body, and Steve tries to pull Tony closer, but for the last week or so he's refused full body hugs. Steve's not sure whether that's a good sign or not. "Okay," Tony finally says, the word broken where it's whispered into Steve's skin.

Steve sucks in a painful breath, presses one last kiss to Tony's forehead and pulls away. "If there's any way at all," he says. "I promise."

Tony gives him a weak smile, but he's pulling off the homing bracelets, letting them bump onto the bedside table. He plops down onto the bed, lets Steve tug off his shoes, fluff his pillows and pull the sheets and blankets up to cover him. Tony doesn't say another word as Steve moves back towards the door, just looks at him with wide, dark, pleading eyes.

Steve feels heavy as lead as he picks his bag back up and makes his way toward the jet.

***

Steve is suitably impressed by CERN. It is nearly as futuristic as Stark Tower, and the populace seems to have about the same average IQ, although it's pooled between a lot more people. And so he's wide-eyed, trying to see it as Bucky would see it, at least until Jane sidles up next to him and says, "Tony Stark singlehandedly built a particle accelerator out of standard issue supplies in his basement in the space of one afternoon and used it to synthesize a previously barely known element. Only reason we're here is that Tony's off construction duties and we need something large scale on, apparently, a tight schedule." And just like that, Steve has to re-evaluate his already stellar opinion of Tony Stark all over again to a point he hasn't previously realized existed.

The Hadron Collider itself is impressive. At least Steve thinks it should be. He has never seen so much polished metals or so many tubes and thingamajigs all in one place. He's kind of surprised they're taken straight there, though, and even more surprised when his scientist companions immediately start setting up shop. "I thought we had a day or so to rest up and get our stuff in order before we had our slot," he says.

Bruce nods absentmindedly as he plugs in a machine even Steve can tell is Stark Tech. It's just that much sharper and more streamlined. "We had JARVIS give Tony a staggered schedule," he says. "That way, if things go south, we'll have you and me back in the Tower when he finds out."

Steve wants to object, he really does. Ideally, no one should ever have to lie. But at the same time, he really does loathe the idea of this all going south and having neither himself nor Bruce, effectively Tony's main physician, nearby if Tony has to be told Bucky can't be extracted. He pushes that thought away. It's an irrelevant one. Obviously, this is all going to work. The only consequences he has to think about are the ones bringing another person from the forties into the present will inevitably create.

It takes another couple of hours to hook up all the equipment and upload the software, and then Steve gets to watch as Rhodey, in his War Machine suit, jets in, withdraws the helmet and pulls up his figurative sleeves to help with the final bits of installation. Steve is reminded all over again, by his fast-moving hands, that Rhodey isn't just a military officer. His foundations are just as solidly in engineering as Tony's. Despite the tense, foreign situation, Steve can't help but try to imagine the two of them in university together, Rhodey's calm competence and Tony's manic genius and how horribly and perfectly the two of them fit together. Steve can't help but be grateful Tony, despite everything, got to have that, got to have that brother-figure who's his complimentary opposite, just like Steve did.

Before Steve's entirely sure what's happening, they've got the portal open, and it's incredible, it's awe-inspiring, it's beyond anything Steve could've ever imagined, different, even, from the one he saw above Stark Tower on the day of the Battle of Manhattan. Rhodey steps in, and Steve's breath catches in his throat, painful as barbed wire. This has to work. More than any other operation Steve has ever been part of, this _has_ to work.

Rhodey reappears maybe five minutes later. Alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone for the kudos, bookmarks and subscriptions, and especially the comments. They mean the world to me.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, quite a few of you have been expressing some impatience with the progress of certain elements in the story, and just so I can stop answering certain questions all over again, I'll let you know that this is going to be a long story, quite a bit longer than I originally envisioned. It'll be a series of its own, told in five or six parts of varying lengths, and will in a lot of ways follow the timeline of the MCU (the alternate version of Iron Man 3 doesn't happen until the summer of 2013, though. I know it's supposed to take place on Christmas 2012, but that's not going to work here). This first part covers the time from the Battle of New York to around February of 2013. It is fairly slow burn and fairly slow paced because the characters have a lot of shit they need to work through. Hope this doesn't disappoint too much, and that at least some of you are willing to stick it out for the long haul. Any questions about that, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer (with as few spoilers as possible). Just thought I should probably be up front about that, so that people who aren't up for long series and re-imaginings of the films know the perspectives.

"Give me another try," Rhodey calls, even as the portal slams his suit into the wall. The suit turns his voice mechanical and alien. Rhodey picks himself back up. "I was a couple seconds late. He was nearly at the ground when I reached him. I've still got a window."

Selvig nods. "It's a go," he says. "Give us a moment to stabilize the Bridge."

The War Machine suit gives an exaggerated nod and flies back to the portal, waits for the go. Steve's throat squeezes tight in response. This needs to work. It has to. For Tony. For Evie and for Steve, for everyone who still lives who has ever loved Bucky. And an utterly selfish part of Steve wants Bucky here before the swoop in Steve's stomach whenever he's with Tony can become something more, something he can't explain or justify, something he hasn't the first idea how to deal with.

"All right," Selvig calls, Scandinavian accent slicing through every word, and part of Steve kind of thinks it should be closer to how Thor sounds. Evidently not. "Colonel, on my mark. Three. Two. One. Go."

Rhodey boosts his repulsors. Between one moment and the next, he's back through the portal. Barely three seconds later, he's spat right back out. "What the hell?" he groans. "I barely even got a look in this time. Fucking ow."

"Someone else should go, if we're making a third attempt," Bruce says. His voice sounds strained. He wants this to work, and there's some comfort in that knowledge even when Steve's whole stomach is sinking. Bruce wants this to work darn bad. That's better than most insurance policies Steve's held in his life. "If your level of success is on a downward spiral, Colonel, you've probably done all you can. Someone else needs to wear the armor."

"I'll do it," Steve says. Doesn't even have to think about it. He may not know how to pilot it - he's not really all that sure how to pilot anything; last time he tried, he crash landed in the Arctic. He knows how much this means to Tony, though. And even before there was a Tony, before any of this, he would've given anything, done anything, for Bucky. Giving those two their happy ending, even if everything else goes wrong somehow and Steve's not around to see it, is beyond a positive outcome.

"No can do, Steve," Jane says. "We don't know enough about the time space continuum to send you back to a time and place where a version of you already exists. The doppelganger paradox is still untested, and right now is not the time to check it out." Her voice lowers. "I'll go, Bruce."

Several voices object. Steve doesn't join them. He doesn't understand what kind of science she used to keep him from trying, but he trusts that she knows what she's talking about. He also understands that whatever her size or gender, she has a right to try.

It takes darn near an hour for everyone else to realize what Steve's already seen. If Steve and Rhodey are out of commission, Jane is their best shot. Selvig is too old. Steve might not know the science behind all this, but even he can tell it must have a rather strenuous effect on the physique. Bruce is a wildcard. Steve doesn't want to know what the Hulk can do to the forties if something goes wrong, let alone in a confined metal suit with only a train in the middle of the Alps to serve as a target. Jane is the _option._

_Rhodey finally figures it out as well, gives up his suit. Jane goes through the portal. She's gone for seven seconds. Then she comes back. "Moment I was about to grab him, I felt like I was being catapulted back," she says._

_"That's how I felt," Rhodey says. He's grimacing as he rubs his shoulder, and Steve suddenly remembers that this man's mid to late forties. What the heck's he doing running around in a metal armor?_

_"We need to plug the armor into the system," Selvig says. "Get all the points of data it's collected. Create some kind of theory or strategy from the base points it's got."_

_That's being done, and for what feels like forever, they're busy speaking what Tony calls technobabble, which is apparently a version of English you only learn to speak if you've a doctorate in a hard science and an IQ of a hundred and forty or more._

_"So Barnes had to hit the bottom," Selvig says. "His death is... is some kind of, of fucking lodestone. Timeline requirement or..."_

_"The suit says the same thing each time," Jane says. "Three attempts, all rebuffed. Three spontaneous portals. Neither Rhodes nor I activated one. Once is a coincidence. Twice is an accident..."_

_"Three's a pattern," Bruce finishes. "So this is Mission Impossible?" Steve has no idea what that means. He can recognize a reference he doesn't understand, but that doesn't mean he knows what to do with it._

_"Apparently Barnes's death is one of those pillars history rests on," Selvig says, and he sounds disgustingly pleased with the notion. Steve kind of wants to punch him, and he's disturbed by how normal that notion is starting to feel to him. Still, that isn't what's important right now, not so long as he can hold back. What is important is... God, he can't even think it. The hope has been churning away inside him for weeks. To have it come to this, have it come to nothing, it hurts worse than any punch he ever took, even before the Serum. It hurts worse than watching Bucky fall for the first time. Hurts worse than knowing he wouldn't make his date with Peggy, hurts worse than waking up alone in an unfamiliar world, hurts worse than watching Tony shudder through a seizure, because finding Bucky... finding Bucky would've somehow made every single one of those things worth it. Finding Bucky now, bringing him into this age, would made all that matter. Now, now it's a waste of hope and energy, and Steve feels like an idiot for having left Tony's side for it. He shouldn't be here. He should be back home, where he belongs, and by God, he is grateful Bruce had the foresight to give them a window to fail and get back to New York City._

_"I'll be going home right now," Steve says, breaking through the others' science babble. "I'll take the jet. Whoever wants to come with me, we're going now."_

__

***

Tony is deep in some sci-fi shoot-up or other when they make it back. Steve sits down next to him, doesn't even attempt to catch his attention, just watches as Tony watches, mouths along with the lines, dark eyes wide as they follow the movements in every shot. Some distant, unwelcome part of Steve's brain informs him that if he'd been going to the movies with Tony back in the day, he'd have been too entertained and endeared to have ever started a fight with anyone.

By the end of the movie, Tony's already asleep, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. As terrible as the notion makes him feel, having an extra few hours to prepare himself makes things that tiny bit better. Bad enough Steve's lost Bucky for good. He doesn't want to know what Tony will do once that lifeline's gone, not before he absolutely has to.

***

Somehow, once again, Steve's managed to fall into a deep sleep in the recliner chair next to Tony's bed. And just like so many other mornings before, he wakes up to Tony's screams. And just like every other time, he barely even wakes up all the way before he's rolled into Tony's enormous bed and wrapped Tony's increasingly oddly shaped body in his arms. Tony's screaming, flailing. Steve kisses his temple, strokes his spine, does the very darn best he can to calm him down. It takes longer than normal, and so Steve starts talking, starts recounting all Tony's favorite Bucky stories, keeping his voice as soft and as soothing as he can, trying not to let his own pain and disappointment and sorrow seep into his voice. Finally, Tony relaxes into restless sleep. Steve can't follow him no matter how darn much he might want to. And so he stays awake alone for long hours, watching random figures dance across the television screen, watches as the first few bits of early morning light begin to make their ways past JARVIS's tinted windows and into the room. Watches as Tony, once again, begins to stir against him, face and unkempt beard digging into his shoulder, arm tightening around his waist, and for a tiny, singular moment, Steve can't stand how at home he feels, the power of the flash of guilt that goes through him at the mere thought.

Tony wakes slowly, little by little, in the way of someone who's never had to sleep in a warzone, and Steve has no idea how he's retained that gift. Tony's survived longer behind enemy lines than anyone Steve's ever known. Finally, wide brown eyes blink open, unfocused at first before they zoom in on Steve, sharpening within moments. "Steve?" he asks, voice slurred with sleep. "You back? Where's James?"

Steve swallows, and heck, he wants to be the kind of guy who knows how to answer that. Right now, he'd really just like to be the guy who isn't seconds away from breaking down crying. "It wasn't possible," he manages, voice choked. "Tony, it just. We tried and kept trying and it just. He's... a lodestone of modern history or whatever they called it. I got no idea how it works. I just. Every time they got near him, they got catapulted back."

"No." It's a moan, throaty and gravelly and heartbreaking, and Steve's throat closes up at the sound of it. "James." Tony's voice is a wretched, wounded thing, an animal sound Steve doesn't know the name for. He feels like he doesn't know anything at all right now, doesn't know what to do except to restrain Tony's hands as they start to reach out, either toward someone unseen, not there, or for his holographic control systems. He pulls Tony tighter against his chest, holds him close and safe. Tony lets out another sound, and Steve thinks it might be Bucky's name again, except it's too broken to make out.

"Shh," Steve whispers, stroking Tony's hair back, stroking his cheeks and back, all the spots that always help soothe him. "Tony, it'll be all right. I promise you, it'll be all right. Whatever it takes, whatever it is that hurts that bad, it'll be all right."

Tony doesn't seem to hear him. One moment, he's sniffling. Then he's sobbing, and his arms and legs are starting to shake, and Steve feels himself being taken over by Bruce's paranoia.

"JARVIS," he says, his whole body suddenly tight with fear. "Get Doctor Banner here right now."

Biting his lip over his own frightened sobs, Steve does whatever he can to keep Tony's flailing limbs still, wrapping himself around Tony's smaller body, pressing his lips against the nape of Tony's neck.

"Deep breaths, Dollface," he says, taking another moment to smooth down Tony's curls. "Deep breaths, and you'll be fine. I'm here, Sweetheart. I'm right here. C'mon, take a breath for me."

In between panicked sobs and hyperventilated breaths, Tony manages a single, proper inhale.

"Right the fuck now, JARVIS," Steve shouts, pressing another kiss against Tony's scalp.

The door slams open and Bruce bursts inside, medic kit bouncing in his hand as he makes his way across the floor. He crouches in front of Tony's tense form, actually slaps his cheek once or twice, and Steve wants to punch him for it. God, he needs to go to the gym soon. "Tony," Bruce calls. He slaps him again. "Tony." He looks across Tony's shoulder, meets Steve's eyes. "Turn him around," he says. "It has to be you he's looking at."

Steve has no idea what Bruce means, but he's a good enough soldier to follow orders when the time is right. He turns Tony over until they're face to face. "Tony," he says, voice sharpening without his consent. "Tony, look at me."

Tony's eyes open to slits, meets Steve's gaze. "Steve," he manages. He's croaking, shaking all over. His eyes are rolling every which way, never quite focusing on anything. "Where's James?"

"Tell him he needs to stop reaching out," Bruce hisses. "Tell him now. He keeps reaching out, he hits another grand mal, he kills them both." He meets Steve's gaze head on. " _Tell him, Cap_."

"Tony," Steve says. "Tony, Sweetheart, Dollface, I needya to look at me. Look at me, Darlin'. Tony. Tony, I needya to stop reachin'. Needya to stop reachin' right now. Tony. Look at me. Look at me, Darlin'." And at some point, those pleadings turn into mantras, something to repeat over and over again, and Steve isn't sure, not at all, that it's even going to work. 

Except then, what feels like days after he starts talking, Tony slumps against him without dropping into a grand mal, and that is such a huge darn victory that even when Tony's clinging to him, sobbing against his neck, Steve can't do anything other than smile. Somewhere in the background, Bruce backs out of the room.

"I'm sorry," Steve tells him, hours later. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring him back to you."

Tony burrows more deeply into his chest, long fingers gripping Steve's ribs with more strength than he'd have expected from most civilians. Then again, he's learnt to expect the unusual from Iron Man. "Wish you coulda," Tony says, and he's slurring again, but it's a different kind of slur in a way that takes Steve several long moments to identify. When he gets the difference, he's chilled to the bone. This isn't a Tony Stark who's just tired or scared, the way Tony has probably been for most of his life. This is a Tony Stark who's done, who's given up. "Wish you coulda," Tony repeats, but already there's less strength to it, and Steve has seen this before, people who simply give into bond loss and _let_ it kill them without putting up a fight. After all Tony's month of fighting, even without Steve's own personal fight for him, he can't possibly accept that by now.

Feeling like an utter bastard, Steve pulls back a hand. Then he slaps Tony across the face. He doesn't use anywhere near all his Serum-induced strength. He does use enough that he should be impossible to ignore. "Tony," he says, forcing his voice sharp. "I need you to tell me what's going on."

For long moments, Tony burrows into his chest, tears soaking Steve's too-tight t-shirt, and he really needs to get JARVIS to get a better supplier. Tony mumbles something into his chest, and Steve's petrified for one long moment. Then his common sense kicks in, telling him he's heard wrong. "Can you say that again?" he asks.

Tony draws back, barely half an inch. "I'm pregnant," he says. Then he collapses back into Steve's chest, and Steve feels himself freeze into a solid ball of... shit, he doesn't even know what the fuck is going on right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that happened...  
> Thanks so much to everyone for the kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks and especially for the comments and speculations. Never fail to make my day.


	15. Chapter 15

"You're what?" Steve asks, and immediately feels like an absolute jerk. He's known this possibility since Ma identified the gender of the name on his own wrist, taught him everything she knew about how a male pair of soulmates work. He takes a deep breath, calms himself down, tries to get his heartbeat under control as his brain attempts to catch up with the situation.

Tony breathes a broken moan into Steve's shirt. "I'm. I'm pr--" His face digs into Steve's chest, and his finger clutch at Steve's shoulders. Steve, slow with shock, wraps his arms around Tony, pulls him close. "There's gonna be a baby." His voice is slurred, muffled by Steve's shirt, the words barely audible.

Steve blinks, feels absolutely stunned, like he's crashing into freezing waters all over again. "What?"

Tony punches his shoulder. "Shut up, you asshole." He isn't slurring now. He's shouting. His hand pulls back to punch again and Steve catches it, cradles it between them. "Don't make me say it again." Tony's voice cracks. "Don't make me say it again."

Steve swallows, strokes his free hand up and down Tony's spine, presses his lips firmly against the top of Tony's head as he tries to process everything he's just heard. A baby, God. He takes that word, examines it, but it's not penetrating. It's not... Well, it's not that Steve doesn't know how that kind of stuff happens. He grew up with a nurse and spent years in the army. He's not a prude. And he certainly knows both Tony and Bucky well enough to know that there's no way they spent two months together without, well. Still, this is. This is. What's he even supposed to say? Do you congratulate someone who's crying snot into your chest? Do you offer condolences when two of the most important people in your life are going to, God, to have a baby? But that's the problem, right there, isn't it? It's just Tony. Bucky's gone. "I'm so sorry I couldn't bring him home to you," he says, and even in his own ears his voice sounds gravelly, tired.

Tony lets out another sob, dry and utterly wrecked. "I can't," he manages. "Steve, I can't. I can't do this, I can't. I can't, can't, ca--" And then he can't seem to talk at all over the heaving sobs shaking through his whole body.

Steve pulls Tony all the closer, trying to control his own panic. Everything about this situation is just too much to take in, and Tony, Tony might be lucid, might not be having a seizure, but Steve can't help but think this is still the most broken he's ever seen him. He wants to call for help, wants someone else here to take this mess off his hands, wants-- He cuts that train of thought off. What he wants right now isn't the important bit. Whatever panic he's feeling, Tony's feeling ten times worse. And yeah, sure, Steve could stand up right now and walk away, but Tony can't, and right now, in this day and age, Tony is the most important person in the world to him. If Steve's at all the man he's always tried to be, at all the good man Erskine said he was, then he sticks this out, stops thinking about himself and makes darn sure he's there for Tony whenever he's needed, and right now he sure is needed. He tightens his grip, feels Tony crawl as close as is pretty much physically possible, like he's trying to disappear into Steve's body, and he's sobbing and trembling and gasping for air, and Steve still doesn't know what to do with this, just knows he can't do nothing. "Shh," he whispers, tries to sound soothing, to inject a calm into his voice that he doesn't feel. "Shh, Darlin', it'll be all right."

Tony shakes his head against Steve's chest. "No," he all but moans. "No, won't. Won't be all right. Steve." He shifts in Steve's lap, pulls himself up just a bit until his face is level with Steve's shoulder. The slight swell of his stomach presses against Steve's hip and darn, that is real. For long moments, he says nothing at all, just stays silent, fingers digging into Steve's back. His face is a warm, damp weight against Steve's collarbone. The scratch of his beard is oddly soothing in the middle of this whole messed up situation. "When I was seven," Tony says then, and his voice is surprisingly calm, but it's also frighteningly empty, utterly monotone. "I built my first robot. I went to Howard's workshop, knocked and knocked. I wanted him to see. I wasn't sure." He pauses a moment. "I felt so distant from everyone, even then, but it was like I knew he was supposed to care, and for whatever fucked up reason, I wanted him to. To care. He didn't open the door. I fell asleep out there. Mamá was down in Washington to lobby for something or other, and Jarvis had already tucked me in, so no one realized I wasn't in bed. Not sure how long I slept, but I woke up when he came staggering out, and he just, he just looked at me, and then he went to bed. It took me three days to get him to look at it, and then he spent twenty minutes telling me every mistake I'd made. And then it was probably another month or so before he paid attention to me again."

Steve winces, ashamed for some reason he can't even quite identify. "I'm sorry," he says, squeezes his eyes shut, tries not to picture it, but it's all too easy, especially with access to Howard's notes, which never fail to make Tony sound more like a science project or an interesting but distasteful thesis than a son. It's too easy to imagine a small Tony, who already would've found communication and connection so overwhelmingly difficult, who wanted approval without being able to explain why, even to himself, who attempted in whatever little way he could figure out to create that kind of connection to his father, and Howard shooting him down. There's that stab of shame again, of latent guilt, and Steve squeezes his eyes shut, runs a hand through Tony's sweaty hair.

"I'm not." The emotion is back in Tony's voice, and his words are slow again, halting and uncertain. "I'm not saying this to make you feel sorry or, or. Not that. I'm saying." He pauses again, swallows audibly. "I'm a lot more like Howard than I'd like to admit," he says then, and Steve can practically hear the way he's holding himself together with all his strength, the way he's forcing himself to keep going. "I'm a workaholic borderline alcoholic mess who finds it fucking near impossible to relate to other people, and I just. I'll be horrible at this."

Steve feels his chest clench tight, bends his head to press a kiss against Tony's temple. Tony is so much more than what he's just said. He's kind and brave and generous and capable of so much more feeling than he's quite able to express, but he is also all those things he's just said. Steve's seen him vanish into his work until the world fades around him, and he can only imagine how much worse it would be if he had access to his workshop. He also knows that while Tony isn't always the best at seeing his own good sides, he is all too insightful on his own shortcomings. And it makes sense, suddenly, why Tony has been working so manically for any tiny chance to bring Bucky home.

"I need him, Steve," and now he is pretty much sobbing through his words again, his mind clearly on exactly the same thing Steve's is. "I need James. I can't do it alone. I can't. I'm going to screw her up so bad, and she's going to hate me, and. No kid should ever have to be stuck with just me. She'll be better off if I just, just. Terminate." A deep shudder goes through him at that word. "But I can't do that either, because what else have I got left of him, and. Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, what the hell am I supposed to do?"

And really, there's only one way to respond to this, only one thing he can do. The exact thing he knows Bucky would've done for him, if their situations had been reserved. "You are not alone," he says, keeping his voice as steady as he possibly can. Gently, he changes his grip of Tony until he can hold him away from his body, just enough to meet his eyes, flash him his most determined look. "And you don't have to do this alone. I'm here for you, right here, for _both_ of you, every step of the way."

Tony's eyes meet his, and they are swollen and bloodshot and still so devastated, but ever so slowly some faint spark of their old fire is entering back into them. He doesn't stop looking though, staring at Steve as though searching for something undefinable. Steve can only hope he's giving the right thing back.

"I promise," Steve says, loading all his determination into those two words.

Tony keeps staring for another long moment. Then he collapses forward again, molding his body to Steve's chest, and it's still beyond strange how perfectly he fits there. He's breathing heavily, but he isn't sobbing anymore, and bit by tiny bit, he relaxes. Steve isn't all that surprised when small, familiar snuffling snores fill the room. Relieved, if anything. Tony needs the rest, more than Steve ever realized. And Steve, Steve needs time to process this new situation, what he has just promised. Carefully, he extricates himself, arranges Tony to be as comfortable as he possibly can be. He tucks the covers tight around Tony's body, strokes the curls out of his face. Then he walks out of the room, barely noticing when JARVIS turns out the lights behind him. He shuts the door and walks across the floor on legs, that, for the first time in years, feel like they can't carry his weight. He collapses down on the couch, lets his face fall into his hands, takes a deep breath. "And here I thought you were the one always cleaning up _my_ messes, Buck," he hears himself mutter. He allows himself a few rapid blinks, rakes a hand through his hair.

"I take it he told you," Bruce says, plopping down next to Steve on the couch, and it's a testament to how out of it Steve's been that he didn't hear him enter the room. "How is he?"

Steve sighs, runs a hand over his face. "He's bad," he says. "For a moment there, after I told him we didn't manage... I honestly thought he was just going to let the bond loss win. And I've seen what that does, when people stop fighting. They just. Waste away. A cold can kill them." He lets out a shuddering breath. "God, what did Buck think he was doing?"

Bruce reaches out and gives his shoulder a brief squeeze. "If Barnes was anything like Tony was known to be before all this, I doubt much thought went into it, from either side."

Steve can't help a snort of laughter, though he has to bite it back before it turns into a sob. "It's a girl?" he asks then, and realizes that it is actually starting to sink in. Doesn't do much to calm his panic, that. "You can tell that kind of thing now? Bucky's family always did tend to have more girls."

"It's a girl," Bruce confirms, wisely choosing not to comment on the rest of it. "He's about, five, five and a half months gone. High risk, obviously. Male pregnancies always are, and that's without counting his age. Then again, even that wouldn't have been a problem without the bond loss, seizures, the big lump of metal in his chest and the fact that he had a building dropped on him a month ago. It's a miracle he hasn't miscarried, and there is no way he'll carry to term, but the healthier he gets, the more rest he gets, the more... settled he gets, the better chance she's got. I'm glad he told you, Cap. I've been trying to make him since we found out, but he was so focused on the chance of bringing Barnes back and the whole idea that once that happened, everything would somehow work itself out..." He shrugs. "I'm glad he told you."

Steve sucks in a shuddering breath, and another, and another, and allows himself this moment of weakness, of having not a darn clue what to do about anything. It's not one he can have in front of Tony, not for anything in the world, but he's pretty sure Banner has a good enough grasp of it that he's safe here. "I got no idea what I'm going to do," he admits. "I got absolutely no idea."

Bruce looks at him strangely, head cocked to the side. "What do you _want_ to do?"

There are so many darn answers to that question, and half of them don't match up. He wants to run away from this whole situation that seems suddenly like way too much to handle, so much bigger, in its way, than fighting HYDRA or even aliens over Manhattan. This is not his problem, is it? Not really. He isn't responsible. He isn't one of those beloved idiots who didn't think to use a rubber. He wants to run and never look back. Except Steve's not a runner. He never has been. He isn't about to start now, or he'll probably spend the rest of his life regretting it. So if that's not what he's going to do, then what does he want? "I ain't got the foggiest."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for all the kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks and especially the comments. Made my day. I still can't believe how many of you I managed to surprise, so yay for that. And keep the speculation going. Even though I don't divulge too many details, I love reading your thoughts and ideas.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: As I have already explained in another note, this story is going to be the first part of a longer series that will span over several full-length stories, and will in a lot of cases follow the timeline of the MCU. This story takes place between April 2012 and February 2013. I'll remind everyone that even if I have Bucky show up, it will not be until April 2014, as per canon. The point of this rant:  
>  _Please stop asking when Bucky will show up or beg for him to do so. I love comments, I love the speculation, but there are only so many times I can read and reply to the same question that I've already said a few dozen times that I'm not going to answer._  
>  In yet another note, I said that for the better part of this story, it will be Steve/Tony. That still holds.
> 
> I'm not trying to sound like a bitch. Just trying to make sure everyone's expectations are somewhat realistic with regards to the actual scope of the story. These things aren't going to be resolved quickly. Please, do keep on speculating, but please stop asking about Bucky, because I'm playing my cards close to my chest. I don't want to spoil the story, so I'm not going to answer.
> 
> Sorry for that long-winded rant. Not trying to piss anyone off or to make anyone feel like shit for having asked. Just trying to make sure we've all got reasonable expectations. And without getting even more long-winded, please enjoy the chapter. Hopefully you can live with the projected length of the story.

It's been hours since Bruce left Steve with another squeeze of his shoulder, and Steve still doesn't have any idea what he's going to do. He's stuck, thoughts going in circles, mind trying to head in too many different directions all at once. He can't even begin to keep up with the way he feels like he's bouncing between wanting to punch Bucky and drag him bodily into the present to deal with the consequences of his own actions, and wanting to hold Tony and never let him go, and he wants to be here and wants to get away and... Fuck. Jesus, fuck.

He's moments away from heading down to the gym and trying to destroy every heavy bag he can get his hands on when his hand bumps against a hard sliver of glass and metal. His phone. He has it out and is making the call before he's quite thought it through.

"Stevie," Evie says from the other end of the line. "How are you?"

"Actually," he says slowly, and he feels sorry for the fact that he's only spoken to her maybe twice, and only briefly, since they met back up. It's just... It's so overwhelming, how old she suddenly is, how much life experience she has, how much she seems to see through him. Feels horrible for the fact that now that he's reaching out again, it's because he needs help. He swallows all that down. If she doesn't want to listen to him whine and moan, she can hang up on him. He knows her well enough to know that she won't hesitate to do just that. "I'm not doin' so good." He pauses, swallows. "Well, I'm all right. It's just. It's Tony." And for a moment, his conscience nags at him. He doesn't have the right to tell her this secret. He should hold back and wait, like Bruce did. Except right now, he needs help, and not just for himself. He needs help if he wants to keep his promise and help Tony. So maybe what he's doing is wrong, but he's got to believe that once Tony is better, he'll understand.

"What's wrong with him, Honey?" Evie asks, pulling him out of his own head, and the concern evident in her voice is enough to make him feel a bit better about this whole thing.

Steve sucks in a sharp breath, squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. "He's. Bucky and him, well, y'know. Tony's pregnant."

Evie is quiet for what might very well be a full minute, which is unusual enough to be worrying. "Well," she says finally. "It's a relief to know that every time imaginary Bucky screamed at me in my imagination for gettin' pregnant out of wedlock, he was bein' a big ol' hypocrite."

Steve can't help but laugh again, but it's halfway hysterical. "He woulda screamed atcha anyway," he says. "Then he'd apologize for bein' an asshole a coupla days later."

"True," she concedes. She's quiet for another long moment. "Poor boy," she says then. "Dead God, I can't even imagine. Havin' him after all that time, then losin' him. Then a baby. Can you even imagine?" She lets a harsh breath. Then, "Well, shit, I'm gonna be an aunt again. Thought those days were long past."

"Can we get back to Tony, please?" Steve asks. He's still used to Evie's tendency to jump from subject to subject, but right now he does not need that. Keeping her on track kind of will help him stay sane right now. "Evie, what am I supposed to do?"

"Sounds like gettin' back to you, not gettin' back to Anthony," Evie says, but her voice is caring enough to take most of the bite out of the words. "Stevie, it depends on so many things. What is Anthony to you? Is he Buck's sweetheart? Is he your friend? Is he somethin' more? Some mix of 'em? You need to answer that question before you can answer the other one."

Steve clenches his mouth shut for a moment, forces himself not to just launch off some rapid-fire reply of the kind that would've gotten him in a fight back in the day. Forces himself to stop and think and darn, if not for the Serum, he'd have had a headache the size of Russia about now. Tony's Bucky's sweetheart, yes, his _soulmate_ , basically his widower. He is also the closest friend Steve's got in the present, even if it isn't exactly a conventional friendship. As for the rest... That swoop in his stomach that Steve would still prefer not to think about... "I guess it's... complicated," he says.

"All three, I'm guessin'," Evie says. There's a hint of amusement in her voice now. "You always was a pretty transparent one." She pauses, but it's one of those typical Evie pauses that sound and feel more like snaps. "I'm guessin' he's somewhere between five and six months gone, so there's still some time," she says then. "For now... Honestly, what I'da wanted someone to do was just be there. Listen, help, be there for the doctor's visits. If you can do that, do it. And take the time you got to figure out what you want and how you gonna do it. Don't make it bigger than it gotta be right now. You got time to grow into it. Whatever it is."

Steve swallows, nods, and it's strange, how wise she is now, how much older, how much more experienced, but he did call her for a reason, and it was just this. "Thanks, Eve," he says, keeping his voice steady, feeling, strangely, steadier too.

"Anythin' to help my boys," Evie says, voice utterly earnest in a way she never even used to be when she apologized. "I love you, Stevie. Remember that. Anytime you need help..."

"I got your number," Steve says, feeling the slightest of smiles tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Thanks."

"Goodbye Stevie," Evie says. "Get some rest. Sounds like you need it."

Steve nods, lowers the phone and presses the red dot. His head is spinning and his whole body feels heavy, and he can't remember the last time he slept. Maybe that's a good idea. Maybe everything will seem a bit better tomorrow. Steve takes a deep breath, sticks his phone back in his pocket and pushes himself back onto his feet. Slowly, he staggers back to his room, undresses and gets under his covers. "JARVIS?" he slurs.

"Yes, Captain Rogers," JARVIS replies.

"Wake me if there's any problem with Tony, please?" Steve manages and gosh, he doesn't remember the last time he was this exhausted.

"Certainly, Captain Rogers."

***

Actually, once Steve has slept and even indulged in a short run through Central Park, everything does grow a lot clearer. He cares about Tony deeply, even if that care is an entity he can't quite fit into any pre-existing box. Bucky was the closest thing Steve's ever had to a brother. There's no way he and Tony could've created a child together that Steve won't love by default. And he doesn't see any future in which he stops caring about Tony, caring _for_ him, so even if a child makes everything more complicated, even if it is life changing, it doesn't really alter any of the fundamentals. In some ways, a lot of ways, it really is that simple.

When he gets in the shower to wash off the sweat from the run, he feels lighter than he has in days. He dresses, shaves, brushes his teeth and walks back into the common space to put together some breakfast. Twenty minutes later, he's carrying two plates of eggs and bacon toward Tony's bedroom, making a mental note to ask JARVIS what pregnant people are supposed to eat. When Steve pushes the door open, Tony's awake, bleary-eyed and curled up tight in his covers as he stares at some cartoon or other playing along the sidewall of the room. Steve crosses the floor, puts the tray on Tony's lap, presses a quick peck to his cheek and takes his own plate to the chair. "Mornin'."

Tony looks up at him briefly with just the barest hint of a not quite real smile on his face. "Morning," he returns. His eyes flick back to the cartoons as he untangles himself enough to get his hands around the utensils. He's more moving his food around the plate than actually eating, but he does get something down. Steve kind of wants to figure out some way to make him eat more, but he still has no idea how to push him without breaking him, and right now that seems a worse idea than ever. "Thanks," Tony adds absentmindedly, spearing a piece of bacon and chewing it impossibly slowly.

"How you doin'?" Steve asks once he's done eating and halfway through washing it down with a glass of juice.

Tony gives a small shrug. "Not sure," he says. "I don't. Jesus, I don't know. I just. Have to reset, I guess." There's an exhaustion to his voice that Steve doesn't like, makes him uneasy. "Get used to the thought that he's really never going to be here."

Steve reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, takes a moment to swallow down the leftover disappointment and sorrow himself. He can't be lingering on Bucky right now. Right now Tony and the baby come first. And with just that thought, he can't help himself any longer. "You needa eat that up," he says. "You need it."

Tony flashes him a glare, and even that doesn't have enough heat behind it. "Don't feel so good," he mumbles, but he does at least eat the rest of the bacon and another few forkfuls of egg. It'll probably take a bit longer to get more out of him than that. The shock of not being able to bring Bucky home... Honestly, Steve's surprised Tony's functioning as well as he is right now. Tony stays silent for long moments, chewing slowly and carefully like he really is feeling sick, and, well, maybe he is. Steve can't really discount that option. "You can stop talking like that, by the way," Tony says, pointedly not looking at Steve. "I'm not. I'm not so gone I need you to help me pretend anymore. Really it just. It makes it worse. I need you to be Steve, not closest-thing-to-James." He keeps staring straight ahead, but there's a strange sort of slump to his shoulders. "Does that make sense?"

Steve bites his lip, takes a moment to mull over Tony's words. And he kind of gets it, gets that this must be the only way Tony has ever heard Bucky speak. Bucky could turn it off - not as well as Steve, but still - he just rarely chose to. And Steve knows, has known for months, that the Brooklyn accent, for Tony, is intrinsically linked with Bucky. Why else would it have comforted him so much back when he was completely out of it? Steve also understands, however painful the thought might be, that Tony has to start letting Bucky go, once and for all, or he's never going to recover. He'll risk falling back into bond loss and despondency and, worst case scenario, dying from it, putting the baby at risk in the process. Steve gets the need for distance. And maybe he needs it too, needs to stop clinging to his old life and his old habits and drag himself fully into the new century. Hold onto Evie and whatever other little things that still matter and are still available to him, but drag himself forwards. This, the way he's been speaking for the past few months, it might not seem like a big thing, but on the other hand, maybe he's been using it as a crutch. Maybe they both have. And somehow, when they weren't looking, it turned into an obstacle. "Yeah," he says slowly, feeling oddly weightless for a moment, and not necessarily in a good way. "Sure. I can do that."

There is the slightest bit more life in the next smile Tony flashes him. Then he pats the bed next to him. "Want to watch cartoons with me? I figure I need to desensitize myself against the mindless idiocy that's marketed for the under-seven crowd in this decade."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to bookmark, subscribe, leave kudos, and especially for commenting and speculating. Have I told you yet how much I love seeing something new in my inbox? ;P


	17. Chapter 17

Steve's known about the baby for three days when JARVIS announces that Bruce is coming up for the twice-weekly check-up. Steve makes to get up from where he's been sitting next to Tony on the bed watching movies (" _Star_ Wars, Steve. _Star_. Not Space") when Tony's hand shoots out and catches him by the wrist. Steve stills, uncertain, waits for Tony to talk. Tony wets his lips, eyes flickering, meeting Steve's for half a moment before looking back away. Finally he looks up, gaze steadying, and meets Steve's eyes head-on. "Stay?" he asks.

Steve has no idea what the sudden churning of nerves in his stomach means, but he's already nodding darn near automatically. "Okay," he says. "Sure. Sure, anything."

The first truly genuine smile Steve's seen from Tony in God even knows how long seems to split his face. His whole body straightens, as if some kind of weight has been lifted from him. Steve feels himself grin in return without even making a conscious choice to do so.

A moment later, Bruce is there, and he and JARVIS are running all kinds of tests and scans that seem centuries, not decades, ahead of everything Steve had to go through throughout his own illness-ridden childhood and young adulthood. Then Tony's hiking up his sweatshirt and Steve cannot look away from the skin presented. He's felt the swell of it already, but Tony's dressing in clothes so loose lately that actually seeing anything is darn near impossible, not that Steve has actually tried to. He's seen plenty of pregnant people in his life - well, pregnant _women_ \- but not with bare bellies. It's almost surreal, the small bump on Tony's otherwise lean body, the idea that there's an actual tiny human being growing in there. And God, the idea that Bucky is going to be a father. _Should have_ been going to be a father. He'd have been amazing at it, a total natural. He always wanted it too, Steve knows that probably better than pretty much anyone, then and now.

They'd shared dreams as kids, back when they still thought Anthony and Howard were brothers, back when they were still young enough to believe that the age difference between Bucky and Tony might not be insurmountable. Steve had wanted a family, sure, but mostly his idea of family had been the four of them and his ma and maybe Becky all living in a house together somewhere upstate. Male pregnancies had been too rare for Steve as a young kid to even consider it, and when he did learn about it, he'd been old enough to know that he might pass on every single thing that was wrong with him. Children had never been in the cards, not for him. Bucky, with his brood of little sisters, had a completely different view of things. He'd wanted kids before he'd even been old enough to know all the funny looks and cold shoulders he'd have encountered if he'd ever gone through with it. When he'd learned that male pregnancies were possible, legal even - only soulmates could reproduce homosexually, which made it tolerable, if not particularly respected, even back in the day when same-sex couples were otherwise thrown in jail or madhouses - he'd been all the more eager. The older he got, the more time that went by without his soulmate being born, the more those dreams began to fracture. Even though Bucky hadn't really talked much about it, Steve was almost certain that in the months before he shipped out, he'd come to the decision that if he survived the War, he'd give up on Anthony, settle down with a nice dame and at the very least have the children he'd always wanted. Now he was going to have a child with his soulmate, and he wasn't around to even know that that dream was going to come true.

"This is going to feel a bit cold now," Bruce says, jolting Steve out of his thoughts. Steve blinks back into the present, watches as Bruce squirts some kind of blue goo on Tony's distended stomach.

Tony winces, reaches out and finds Steve's hands with his own, lacing their fingers together in a gesture that feels maybe the tiniest bit too intimate so soon after thoughts of Bucky and how badly he'd have wanted to be here. Still, if it's what Tony needs, Steve can do it, even if a tiny tendril of guilt is curling through the habitual swoop and clench in the pit of his stomach that Tony seems to be inducing constantly these days, without even trying. With some effort, Steve shoves all that away, focuses back on Tony, squeezes the calloused hand in his own.

Bruce picks up some kind of weird technological thingamabob. One of the holographic screens flare to light as he presses the tip of the thing to the goop on Tony's belly. There's some strange, oddly low-tech flickering, grey on black, as Bruce moves the thing around. And then suddenly. Well, fuck, that's a baby. That is definitely a baby. It's small, even on the screen, but perfectly formed, head and arms and legs and tiny hands and feet, and Steve can see the rapid beating of its heart. _Her_ heart, that much is obvious too, if only by virtue of what is definitely not there. Steve sucks in a breath, holds it so it won't start coming too fast.

Tony's hand tightens around his, and Steve glances down at him, immediately feels all his own panic and incomprehension flee to the background. Tony is very determinedly not looking at the picture or film or whatever it's called. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut, lashes wet and clumped together. He's darn near hyperventilating, free hand trembling.

Steve glances over at Bruce, pulls himself together as he wraps his free arm tight around Tony's too-thin frame. "Turn it off," he says.

Bruce looks for a moment as though he's going to protest, but he takes one look at Tony and nods. "JARVIS, please save the footage," he says. Then he packs his things back up and places a towel on the bed next to Steve before moving out of the room.

Steve picks up the towel and carefully wipes Tony's stomach clean before slowly tucking his sweatshirt back into place. "Was that the first time you got to see her?" he asks.

Tony presses closer, shakes his head against Steve's neck. He doesn't say anything for long moments, then he pulls back, straightens his back, opens red-rimmed eyes. He keeps his fingers laced with Steve's. "I have," he says, voice breathy in the way it is when you're holding sobs back and trying to speak at the same time. "It's the first time since I realized that." He stops, Adam's apple jumping on a sharp swallow. "That he isn't going to be here."

Steve takes a deep breath, squeezes Tony's hand, tries to figure out something to say, but shit, this isn't a pre-battle pep talk, and aside from those, words haven't ever really been his strong side. "He isn't," he says finally. "But she will. And she's. That's Bucky's little girl. He'd have loved her to death. She'll be gorgeous and amazing and so, so clever. This can be a good thing, Tony. It really can. Even without him."

Tony nods slowly, but Steve can see the doubts right there in his eyes. Not in the baby, but in himself. The belief in all those existent and non-existent character flaws, the utter conviction that he'll do everything wrong. Steve wishes he could wipe that look right off his face, but he doesn't have the first clue how to even start. "Are you going to leave too?" he suddenly asks, and his voice is so, so impossibly small it's darn painful to hear.

Steve shakes his head, squeezes Tony's hand again. "I'm in it for the long run," he says.

***

About a week later, JARVIS calls Steve upstairs in the middle of his workout and Steve goes running without even stopping to question the situation. He taps his fingers against the wall in the elevator, chest tight with concern and impatience, races out the moment the doors open and all but crashes into Tony's room. "Tony," he calls, coming to a halt next to the bed. "Are you all right? What's wrong? What's happening?"

Tony looks into space with eyes that are impossibly wide, stunned. His mouth is hanging open, his breaths coming fast. One hand is pressed to the small mound of his stomach.

Steve immediately feels panic begin to rush through him. "Tony, is it the baby?"

Tony blinks once, twice, and then his eyes focus on Steve's face. His lip wobbles, but he's holding it together. "She." His whole body gives something almost like a tiny jump. His eyes widen. "She moved. Steve, she's moving. She. Steve." He holds out his free hand. It's shaking, and Steve takes an unconscious step forwards, lets Tony clasp his wrist and pull him the last step until he's sitting on the edge of the bed. With quick, clumsy movements, Tony turns Steve's hand over and presses the palm of it against his stomach.

For long moments, Steve doesn't feel anything except warm, swollen skin through soft fabric. And then, suddenly, there's a strange kind of pressure, like something's pushing on Tony's stomach from the inside. Steve feels his own mouth drop, hears a gasp and doesn't realize for several long moments that it's coming from him. The pressure eases, and then it's back, a bit different now, but there's definitely something alive and awake in there, moving and living and utterly real. "Has she done that before?" he asks.

"I'm not sure," Tony says, curling his fingers around the back of Steve's hand. "I think so. I've thought maybe she was for a few days, but I couldn't tell if it was gas."

Steve nods absentmindedly, utterly caught up in the sensation of movement and, and _life_ right beneath the palm of his hand. It's real, it is so utterly real, and he's thought that's sunk in already, but it hasn't, not really, not like this. Sooner than any of them can probably really comprehend, there's going to be a real live human baby in the Tower with them. And they aren't the least bit ready. "She's really there," he hears himself breathe.

"She's really there," Tony echoes, and his voice is shaky and tight. His hand trembles against Steve's, but thankfully not in the way that threatens a seizure.

Steve forces himself out of his daze, turns his hand over and clasps Tony's tightly. Looks up and meets his eyes. Tony's frightened, that much is immediately obvious. His breath is still coming in too fast and the hand Steve isn't holding is fisted in the sheet at his side. His teeth are digging into his bottom lip so hard Steve's surprised he hasn't drawn blood. Chest clenching painfully, Steve moves up until he can sit next to him and wrap him in a hug, hold him tight. "You'll be all right," he says, pressing the words against Tony's temple. "You'll be just fine. You won't be alone, I promise you."

For long moments, Tony's whole focus seems to be on breathing, on pulling himself together. When he finally straightens back up, his eyes are dry and his breaths are deep and even. "Thanks," he says. "Sorry I keep blubbering all over you."

Steve quirks a grin at him. "Whatever you need." He takes a breath, feels suddenly awkward. His gaze falls back down on Tony's distended stomach. "Where are you going to put her?" he asks, and immediately wants to take the question back. Tony, Steve has no idea how Tony is going to react to this, how he'll handle it. But at the same time, he can't regret asking, can't live with the idea of this little girl being born without a place ready and prepared for her. And yeah, he knows stuff like that happens faster these days. People probably don't hand knit baby blankets and all that anymore, but still. They do need to be ready, and she's probably, according to Bruce, going to come faster than they're going to be ready for her.

Tony sucks in a sharp breath, reaches up to run a hand through his hair. It's shaking again. "I don't," he starts, stutters back to a halt. "Steve, I can't. I can't think about that right now. I can't." He squeezes his eyes shut. "Fuck, I can't even get out of bed. How the hell am I supposed to set up a nursery? What do you even put in a nursery? Fuck." He pulls his hand down to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Steve, I can't do this. What kind of an idiot was I to-- Nursery, and furniture, and clothes, and toys and, and. _Fuck_." He pulls his legs up as close to his chest as he can get them, plants his elbows on his knees, buries his face in his hands. "I can't do this, Steve," he mumbles into his palms, voice so muffled it's difficult to make out the words. "I can't. Why did I think I could do this?"

Steve leans back against the headboard, wraps an arm around Tony's shoulders, but doesn't try to pull him close. He's too rigid right now, doesn't seem to want the comfort. "Tony," he says. "I know people are difficult for you already. I know a baby's darn difficult. I still remember Evie giving me headaches, and I didn't even have to live with her. But you are capable of so much more than you're telling yourself right now. You were building stuff most adults can't even conceive of before you even started high school, and you started high school darn early. You ran a fortune five hundred company before you turned twenty-two. You built an arc reactor in a cave with a box of scraps, survived three months as a terrorist prisoner. You built a flying suit and saved this whole city. You can do anything if you want it enough and try hard enough." Slowly, Tony's beginning to relax against him, and Steve pulls him closer. "Don't think about the nursery or the clothes or stuff. JARVIS and I will take care of it, if you want. I'm sure the others will want to help too. Just... Worry about being all right. It'll work out in the end, I promise you. _You are not alone_."

Tony turns his head slowly, lifting it from his hands, and his eyes are wide and so dark and so close, Steve hadn't even realized how close they were sitting. Tony blinks once, lashes fluttering. He breathes out, and Steve can feel the exhalation wafting over his own lips, warm and damp and smelling like the ice cream that's still sitting half-melted in a bowl on the bedside table. Steve feels that swoop go through his stomach again, hot and sharp, and he breathes in harshly. His mouth tingles where Tony's breath touches it again. "James would hate how useless I'm being," Tony says. 

Steve moves his head back a handful of inches, mentally kicking himself. What the heck is he thinking? Now is not the time or the place, and. God, he's an idiot, such a complete and utter idiot. He forces a smile onto his face, shakes his head. "Buck would understand," he says, and wishes he could say Bucky would understand Steve's actions too, condone his feelings, wouldn't punch him in the face for what he was inches away from doing. "He loved you," he says, and the certainty of that is more overwhelming than it's ever been before. How could Bucky _not_ love Tony? "And he'd say what I'm saying: take care of yourself right now, and let me worry about the rest."

Tony manages a small, shaky smile at that. "Thanks, Steve. You're a good friend."

Yeah, Steve's suddenly not so sure about that. At all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the kudos, bookmarks and subscriptions, and especially for the comments. They mean the world to me. Finding something new in my inbox always puts a smile on my face.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay. Was out of town for a few days, didn't have access to my files. But hey, I'm back now and here's a new chapter. 623 should be updated sometimes tomorrow if things go as planned. Have fun.

"How do you even--" Steve turns the stamp, marker, whatever thing it is over and over in his hand, blinks up at the automated game that, all right, is kind of quaint when compared to what Tony's got up in the Tower, but is still... "This is nothing like Bingo. How does this even work?"

"Shh," Evie hisses. "I can't hear the numbers." She quickly stamps two numbers on the papers in front of her and goes back to listening intently to the glitter-bedecked woman up front calling out more numbers. She casts a quick glance at Steve's papers. "You're fallin' behind, Honey."

Steve frowns for a moment, works to recall the numbers he's heard. After another quick struggle, he gets the stamper thing to work and punches in every number he can recall hearing. "Huh," he says. "Bingo." He looks up at the lady. "Bingo," he calls, a bit more loudly. Sixty sets of angry eyes turn towards him and Steve fights the urge to squirm in his seat, feeling so out of place it makes his skin itch, never mind that most of these senior citizens are technically younger than him. "What?" he asks Evie, keeping his voice soft, more than a bit uncomfortable. "That's the point of the game, isn't it? It can't have changed that much."

Half an hour later, Steve has racked up two clothing store gift certificates, another one for some local Brooklyn restaurant or other, something that says something about margaritas, whatever that is, and Evie's utter refusal to ever play Bingo with him again. "So," she says once they're sat in the Bingo hall's cafeteria with cookies and Christmas themed mugs of coffee. "How are ya?"

Steve shrugs. "Busy," he says. "Never imagined this kind of stuff could take that much time, but yanno." He feels a small smile tug at his mouth. "Then again, I guess it was my own choice to paint that butterfly mural and buy the kind of furniture you have to put together yourself rather than just, yanno, ready-made. And buyin' clothes for babies is darn difficult. Ya know how much stuff they got for you to choose from now?"

Evie nods. "Havin' kids is more time-consuming these days," she says. "Don't mean we loved 'em less back in our time, just that things're done different now. Especially when the kid in question got a surname like Stark. You're doin' a good thing, Stevie." She flashes him a small smile. "You sound happy, too. You got no idea how good it is to hear ya soundin' happy."

Steve shrugs again. "I guess it's just nice, doin' somethin' important for someone else that don't involve killin' or maimin' anyone." He can't help but grin a little. "Kept me so occupied I darn near missed Thanksgivin'," he says. "Only realized what day it was when someone laughed about how all the Chinese takeaway had turkey in it. It was good, though. Whole team ate together, watched movies. Some funny ones too. Tony actually laughed."

"How's he doin'?" Evie asks, concern lacing her words. "It can't be easy. He was in a bad place already. All this baby stuff on top of that..."

"I think he's gettin' back on his feet," Steve says. "Bit by bit, but he's gettin' there. Smilin' more, talkin' more, 'bout the baby even. Figuratively speakin', on the getting' back on his feet bit. I don't think Bruce'll actually let him on his feet until the baby gets here."

"You're smilin'." Evie's wearing that grin that always scared him way back when, always promised immediate embarrassment. "Stevie, you're smilin'." She's leaning out of her chair, in closer to where Steve's sitting. "That is so sweet, Stevie. When you gonna tell him you like him?"

Steve feels his cheeks heat up even as something in his stomach sinks and clenches and his good mood evaporates. He hates how much this is beginning to tear at him, how, ever since he realized he'd been just about to kiss Tony, he can't stop thinking about it, can't make the tingles and the tenderness and the want go away, how, every single time, it gets harder to push it into the background. Hates the fact that part of him is starting to resent his dead best friend. "I ain't," he says simply.

She frowns. "Stevie, Honey, why not?"

He shakes his head, bites down on the inside of his cheek. "He still calls out for Bucky in his sleep sometimes," he says. He makes himself shrug again, does what he can to play it off as less than it is. "That's. I couldn't do that. And even if I thought for a moment that he might actually be interested, I'm not sure I could do that to Buck."

"Stevie." She reaches out, grips his hand and takes it in hers. "Doncha get it yet? There was no one in the world Buck trusted more'n he trusted you. If he can't be there for his family himself, there's no one else he'da wanted to be with them more'n you."

Steve snorts, takes a deep breath and straightens his back just a bit, squeezing her hand. "There's bein' with them, takin' care of them. And then there's tryin' to step in and take Buck's place. I couldn't ever do that."

"You wouldn't, though," she says. "You and Bucky are far too different. You couldn't ever take his place. You can make one for yourself, though. Ain't that what you always done, Stevie? Make a place for yourself? Make everyone see you even through the glare of that big ol' light Buck gave off? Doncha ever try to be Buck. Be yourself. That's good enough, Stevie. And you know you'da had Bucky's blessin'. He wouldn't ever begrudge you your happiness, 'specially if it brings some happiness to his family as well."

Steve sighs, but can't really think of anything to say to that. Because she's right, Steve knows she is. That doesn't make it suddenly sit easy on him, that he has these feelings he's still not sure he should have. "Still," he says. "It ain't the right time, ain't even close."

She squeezes his hand before letting go. "Maybe it ain't," she says. "But don't go throwin' in the towel just yet. He'll be hurtin' over Buck for a long time, but it'll fade, and there'll be room there for someone else eventually. And if he's got a brain in that dumb head of his, how could he not fall for you?"

Steve is less sure about that part. He musters up a smile anyway, leans in to kiss her cheek. "Thanks for tonight, Evie. Gotta head back now, though. JARVIS told me you're supposed to wash new clothes before you wear'em these days, and I got a load of baby stuff I needa fold and put away."

She lets out a snort of amusement. "So darn domestic, aincha?" She pulls him down for a quick hug. "Good to see you," she says. "Don't be a stranger. And remember, time comes, I wanna see more than ultrasounds of my niece, goddit?" She's exaggeratedly patting her purse where she put the printout Steve gave her earlier.

Steve rolls his eyes. "Goddit."

***

"Steve?" Tony says a couple of days after Christmas. He's in a good mood, has been in a good mood for most of the second half of December. He doesn't seem to have that much of a relationship to Christmas itself, but he loved the presents, especially giving them, and has made no secret of the fact that he absolutely loves Christmas food. Even now, he's got a plateful of leftovers in his lap that he's happily eating, and okay, they ran out of the actual leftovers yesterday, but everyone was so happy to see him eating properly that JARVIS ordered the ingredients in all over again and Steve spent the better part of last night assisting Bruce in making new leftovers. He's pretty sure Tony knows, but he hasn't complained yet, and so long as he's eating, Steve doesn't really care.

"Yeah?" Steve says, leaning back further in the chair and throwing his socked feet up on the edge of Tony's bed.

Tony all but inhales another two forkfuls of food before he speaks again. Then he pushes the plate to the side a bit. He's gotten better at masking his emotions, but Steve's gotten equally better at reading him. His nerves are coming through loud and clear, and Steve can't quite help the automatic concern that bursts through him at the sight. "Steve?" he says again.

"Yeah, Tony?" Steve tries to keep his voice calm and steady, but he's definitely getting nervous now.

Tony swallows, looks away for a moment before meeting Steve's eyes. "I know this is a lot to ask," he says then. "And you may not want to. I mean, I've already put so much on you here, and I'll understand if you just... want out by now, but." He stops, sucks in a sharp breath. "You're James's best friend, and you've done so much for me. You're, you're really important to me as well, and."

"Don't want out at all," Steve reassures when it becomes clear that Tony's ground to a halt. He can't help the sharp flush of warmth at Tony's last sentence. "I help because I want to, and you and the baby, you're." He stops, feels a curl of embarrassment, but Tony's the kind who needs things spelled out for him, whatever that might cost Steve. "You're the most important people to me in this time."

A small, nervous smile plays across Tony's lips. "Good," he says. He sucks in a sharp breath. "I wanted to ask if you'd be. If you want to be her Godfather?"

Steve blinks. Opens his mouth. Shuts it. Breathes in hard through his nose. He's honestly never even thought he might be asked. "I thought you'd ask Rhodey," he says slowly, trying not to put anything into his voice that'll make Tony draw back into himself all over again.

Tony gives a small shrug, and Steve can already see the uncertainty starting to make its way back into his features. "Rhodey is incredible," Tony says finally. "He's put up with my shit for decades. I'm lucky to have him in my life. But he's constantly deployed, and he'll probably be for years yet. And you, well. You've already done so much for her. You already take care of her. And you have stories to tell her about James that no one else knows. You can. She's never going to know him. But at least, through you, she can know more of him than she ever might've otherwise." He says Bucky's names without hitching breaths or stutters, actually speaks about him without halting, but Steve can only spend so long taking that in before he's nodding.

Whatever his own issues and stupid, tangled emotions right now, Bucky was his brother. Steve helping Bucky's daughter learn as much about him as she possibly can, giving her as much of him in her life as possible, that was never even in question. Steve's already got a sketch book that's all Bucky, all ages and situations, that's been meant to go to the baby from day one, but still, this responsibility, it's... It's humbling, and incredible, and Steve feels a smile tugging on his lips. "I'd be honored," he says.

Tony grins wider than Steve thinks he's ever seen him do. "Thank you," he says, slumping as if someone's lifted a weight off his shoulders.

"Do you have a name for her yet?" Steve asks, half afraid he'll push Tony right back off this high, but. Well, if he doesn't have a name yet, he needs to get thinking.

"Maria," Tony says, without hesitation. "And I know what you're probably thinking: my parents were dicks, why would I name her after one of them?" Steve wasn't thinking that at all, actually; he doesn't know enough about Maria Stark to make a judgement call on her. He isn't about to interrupt when Tony's talking about something personal, though. "Here's the thing, though. _Howard_ was a dick. He tricked Mamá into giving me the name they did. She spent the rest of her life trying to make up for it. She changed my name legally about four times. I was actually legally Antonio Collins Carbonell for nearly two years before Howard found out and changed it back. Not that that ever changed anything." He shrugs. "She was there for every single seizure before I went to boarding school, holding me. _Crying_ over me." He lets out a strange little self-deprecating chuckle that makes Steve want to use Tony's time machine thing to go back in time and punch Howard. Not the first time he's had that impulse. "I cost her so much pain, but I never once doubted she loved me. And I know she never doubted I loved her back, even when I couldn't show it. She was helpless sometimes, but she did what she could. She was strong."

Steve nods, flashes him a small smile. "She sounds like a good woman," he says. "I'd have liked to have met her."

"She'd have loved you," Tony says with a small chuckle. This one sounds far more real than the previous one, doesn't grate at Steve's ears and heart nearly as badly.

"Any thoughts on a middle name?" Steve asks.

Tony shrugs, looks down at his hands. "I was thinking maybe you could come up with that one," he says finally. "Something that means something to you, would've meant something to James. Just. There's so much weight to a name. I don't." He pauses, bites his lips. "Don't want to carry it alone. You don't have to, of course, but--"

Steve reaches out, grips Tony's fluttering hands and stills them gently. "I'd be honored," he says again, and means it.

"I'm vetoing Winifred, though," Tony adds quickly. "I'm sure she was a lovely woman and all that, but there's no way in hell I'd let that happen."

Steve bursts out laughing, and he wants to kiss Tony so badly it hurts. Instead, he squeezes his hands tighter for a moment before letting them go. "No Winifred," he says. "I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who bookmarked, subscribed, left kudos, and especially to those who took the time to comment. Means the world to me.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, appears I counted the chapters wrong. So, 22 rather than 21. Sorry about that.  
> Also, nothing graphic, but there's childbirth and a C-section going on in this chapter, so if that's something you don't think you can handle, just, you know, skip it or something.

Steve bursts out laughing. "Come on, she won't be able to use a train set for years," he says. "And she'll choke on those marbles. Stop trying to find nineteen-twenties toys. The stuff they make these days is way better."

Tony shrugs, pouting exaggeratedly. "She can _look_ at the train," he says. "That should still be interesting."

"It'll be months until she can even focus on an object more than a foot away," Steve counters.

Tony cocks an eyebrow. "Pretty sure that wasn't common knowledge in your time, old man." He'd rubbing a hand carefully over his stomach, shifting a bit. The baby has been bothering him all day. Steve knows all too well; he's helped him to the bathroom at least a dozen times already.

"I read," Steve says.

"Baby books?" Tony's smirking now, and Steve kind of wants to tickle him, or put him a headlock or _something_ , to wipe that off his face, except that's not really something you do to someone who's halfway through his third trimester.

Steve sticks his tongue out and tries not to feel like a giant child. "Someone has to," he says, and tries not to pay too much attention to the warmth bubbling up in the pit of his stomach. It's good to see Tony like this, smiling and playful and loose and easy, and it's been happening more and more lately, often combined with tentative little shopping sprees that will turn up a new doll-sized dress or a teddy bear or wooden building blocks with hand-painted numbers and letters. Often, like now, he has no idea what he's doing, but seeing him involved in the process at all is such a huge step in the right direction. Steve wouldn't say he's getting over it. Losing Bucky is too big a wound to scab over so fast, and Steve still often catches Tony staring into space, expression openly frightened or desolate, until he realizes he's being watched and pulls on his mask. This, though, this doesn't feel like an act. It feels as genuine as the sorrow and the fear, and seeing that side at all means so darn much.

On the less uplifting side, it also makes Steve's stomach knot up and his heart threaten to beat out of his chest. It's a darn good thing he's already so easy with Tony he can act almost on autopilot. Otherwise he'd probably spend half the time stumbling over his words and sticking his foot in his mouth like he did back in the old days when he met a pretty dame.

Tony rolls his eyes, rubs his hand over his stomach again with a slight grimace. "I've read a couple," he says, shrugging. "Psychology, mostly."

 _So I can mess her up a bit less_ , he doesn't say, but Steve can't help but hear it anyway. Still, if reading books on children's psychology helps him feel a bit less unsure of himself, that can only be a good thing. "Anything interesting?" he asks.

Tony shrugs again, though the movement looks stunted, like he doesn't have his full range of motion. "Bowlby," he says after a pause. He looks the careful kind of blank that means his mind is racing somewhere behind the impassive face and his insecurities are being carefully masked moment by moment. Steve hates it. After a few moments, Tony can't hold it anymore, and something in his expression crumbles just the tiniest bit. He might be closer to the original Tony Stark than Steve has ever seen him, but he's still not quite there. Maybe, when push comes to shove, that's for the best. "I'm not sure how someone like me is supposed to provide attachment," he says. "Or Stern, and the narrative self. If you create your identity by telling yourself into the world and having someone else tell you back... How can I be that to someone?"

Steve keeps the smile he sends Tony small and soft. "I think you'll do better than you think," he says. "This kind of stuff, it might not come to you naturally, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. It doesn't mean you haven't learnt a trick or two over the years. Besides." He reaches out, grips Tony's hand and gives it a quick squeeze before dropping it again. Tony doesn't invite physical contact as much as he used to, seems to be trying to prove that he doesn't need it. Whatever stage of recovery or whatever that means he's in, Steve isn't going to push it. They might be baby steps, but Tony needs to take them on his own, even the ones Steve doesn't much like. "You're not going to be on your own."

The smile Tony sends back at him is so impossibly sweet it makes something deep inside Steve's chest ache, and he can't help but be grateful that even with Tony's slow but steady healing, this part of him is still here, still often out in the open. Tony grimaces again. "Ow," he says. He blinks. Then. "Ow, oh."

Steve is immediately on alert, the pleasant-painful tingles turning to fearful concern. "What's happening?" he asks, already on the edge of his seat and ready to leap into any kind of action that might help.

Tony lets out a halfway hysterical laugh. "Either I pissed out my ass, or my water just broke," he manages, and he's still laughing, but the edge is getting more and more brittle, and Steve can see where the corners of his mouth are starting to tug down. Slowly, the laughing stops, and Tony draws in a shuddering breath. "JARVIS," he says, voice turned into a scratchy, frail thing. "Call Bruce." Then he turns his head, looks at Steve with those big, frightened dark eyes.

Steve reaches out and grasps Tony's hand again, holds it in his own, does his best to still the frightened trembling he can feel going through it. With his other hand, he cups Tony's face, runs the pad of his thumb over his cheekbone, steadies his face so he keeps looking straight at Steve. "Calm down," he says, keeping his voice soft and gentle. "Calm down. It's all right. You're fine. You're going to be just fine. I'm right here."

Tony's free hand shoots up, covers Steve's over his cheek. His fingers are shaking. For long moments, he says nothing, just sits there, breath coming too fast, eyes too wide and unblinking. Then, "Stay?"

Steve swallows, unsure. He's no doctor. Is he even allowed in here? He doesn't know how it's done nowadays, but back when he came from, he'd, well, he'd be out in a waiting room watching Bucky pace a groove in the floor and telling him not to be such a worry-wart. But Bucky isn't here. Bucky doesn't need him, won't ever need him again. Tony does, and Steve owes it to them both, to Tony and Bucky, to be here if that's what it takes to make things easier. Even if it means seeing stuff he'd rather not see. "If they let me," he promises.

Tony nods, relaxes into the palm of Steve's hand. "Thanks," he mutters.

A moment later, the door snaps open and Banner rushes inside. "I already called Doctor Bouvier," he says. "He'll be here within the next thirty minutes." He's wearing a white smock and a funny white hat that covers his hair. He's snapping on latex gloves as he goes. "Cap," he says. "If you're coming with, I need you to go wash your hands and put on a smock and a hair cover. Then I could really use a hand getting him down to medical." He turns back to Tony before Steve has a chance to respond. "JARVIS says you've been experiencing discomfort all day and that your water just broke," he says, all business. "Are you feeling any real contractions yet?"

Steve would really rather not hear too much more than that, so with a final squeeze of Tony's hand, he extricates himself and hurries off to find the required clothing items. Bruce has made it easy, has left the smock and hair cover right outside the door. Steve isn't sure whether he's relieved or disappointed. He ignores that thought. This is as far from being about him as pretty much anything in his life has ever been. He puts the stuff on as quickly as he can and rushes back into the room to help move Tony onto the stretcher and wheel him to the elevator.

Tony stiffens as the elevator doors shut. He arches, face pulling into a grimace, breath coming out in a loud whoosh. "Ow," he says. "That was definitely a contraction. Fucking ow."

"Remember, Tony," Bruce says, and his voice is soft and gentle now. "Whatever you do, don't push."

Steve frowns. "Isn't that the whole point of this thing?" he asks.

Tony bursts out laughing again, thin and wheezy, but not the ugly thing from before.

"Only if he'd carried to term," Bruce says without taking his eyes off Tony. "A pregnant man's pelvis doesn't separate until the final two or three weeks of the pregnancy. Tony's not there yet, so there's literally no room for the baby to come out that way. It would be dangerous for them both to even try. Hence, C-section."

Steve feels his eyes widen, swallows with a click. He can't help but flinch a little and look at Tony with worried eyes. Tony's answering smile is completely at odds with the frightened look he can't quite mask. Steve forces his own apprehension and sudden cold fear to the side, squares his shoulders and tries to look as certain and supportive as he knows how.

They're wheeling out of the elevator a moment later and into one of the med-bay's patient rooms where Tony's quickly transferred onto the bed. Steve averts his gaze when Bruce begins to help Tony change. Tony lets out another sharp laugh. "C'mon Steve, I barely had any modesty to begin with, and when you're pregnant your body becomes something so far from your normal one that you just lose all sense of shame."

Steve grimaces, and doesn't tell him it's simply not polite. He doesn't want to hear that awful laugh again.

"All decent now," Tony calls a moment later. "Or, you know, as decent as you can get in a hospital gown."

Steve turns back around and watches as Bruce begins to set up an IV, clamps some plastic thing or other onto the tip of Tony's index finger, sets up any number of machines Steve doesn't know the names for. A moment later, Tony arches again, tries to curl in on himself afterwards. The first few tears are already clumping his lashes together. Steve aches for him, offers his hand. Tony clamps onto it immediately, breathing harshly through the rest of it. "Okay?" Steve asks, rubbing his thumb over Tony's knuckles.

Tony sucks in a sharp breath, lets it out. "That was painful," he says. "Ow. Never doing this again." For a moment, a shadow flashes over his face, probably at the reminder that with Bucky dead, he won't ever have the chance again, whether or not he wants it.

Bruce reaches in to squeeze Tony's shoulder before setting up some kind of screen just below Tony's chest, which will, thankfully, hide what's going on further down from their view.

Tony's head lolls to the side until he's looking up at Steve, eyes still glistening with unshed tears. Then he lifts up just enough to glare down at Bruce. "Where are my drugs? I want my fucking drugs."

"We need to wait for Doctor Bouvier," Bruce says, still fussing around with something or other that Steve can't really make out from the angle he's standing at. "Just remember not to push."

"Sooner or later, that's going to be a hell of a lot more easily said than done," Tony grumbles, but he does lie back down, shuts his eyes for a few moments. His breathing has mostly evened out. "Steve, can you tell me a story?" he asks.

Steve opens his mouth to start, ignoring the dull stab of pain that goes through him, has gone through him every time Tony has asked for that lately, not that it's happening nearly as often anymore.

"No," Tony interjects quickly. "Not. Not one of those. One about the USO, maybe. Or your ma. Just. Don't want to think about this right now." He throat bobs on a swallow. "Don't want to think about him either."

Steve nods, more grateful than he thinks he should be. He takes a moment to search his mind for something before deciding on one from the USO tour where Anna, Betty and Mary had started a campaign to see who could scandalize Steve the most. It's a pretty embarrassing one, but it's worth it when Tony smiles through half his next contraction, until he has to stop to grimace and let out a pained moan. Steve reaches in, strokes the dark hair, already growing damp with sweat, out of Tony's forehead, and starts up another story.

A few minutes later, Dr. Bouvier finally shows up, and then everything. Well, it doesn't happen quickly, exactly. In fact, it's far more slow than Steve would've imagined, and he doesn't like that one bit. But everything is so strange and such an ordered chaos that all Steve can really do is focus completely on Tony, holding his hand, stroking his hair, telling him story after embarrassing story while Tony's eyelids seem to grow heavier and heavier and each blink lasts longer. Then the nurse who arrived shortly after Dr. Bouvier is holding a tiny, squalling infant, carrying her off to be washed up and checked over, and Tony blinks into a deep, restful sleep. Steve breathes a sigh of relief. That relief lasts exactly until Bruce looks back to their side of the curtain to see why they've gone so quiet. He catches sight of Tony, and his eyes widen in panic.

"Well, fuck," Bruce says. Then he rushes over and lifts a hand, clearly preparing to slap Tony back awake. Steve catches it midair, feels the change of the atmosphere much too keenly, and he doesn't have a fucking clue what's going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to bookmark, subscribe, leave kudos, and especially for the comments. So much love for those.


	20. Chapter 20

"What?" Steve asks, feeling Bruce's panic begin to immediately bleed into his own body. "Don't hit him. What's wrong? Bruce?"

"He shouldn't be sleeping right now," Bruce says. "He can't sleep. Steve, see if you can wake him."

Steve frowns. "Bruce, he's exhausted. He just made another person. I think he's allowed to sleep a little."

"Steve." Bruce's voice is sharp, barely controlled. Green is etching into his irises. "He has bond loss."

For a moment, Steve's panic spikes. Then he pushes it away, forces himself to calm down. He knows what Bruce is talking about. He has seen bond loss before in his life, he knows how it works. A long time ago, his ma told him that it's not the actual bond loss that kills people. It's everything else. It can be something as simple as a cold that even Steve would've been able to shrug off back in the day, because the body simply can't be bothered to fight. He knows a few examples of people who lasted through a pregnancy despite the death of their soulmate, only to die in childbirth. But that's not Tony. A month ago, Steve might've been scared, but not anymore. He shakes his head. "He's doing better," he says. "Slowly, maybe, but he's getting better. He's been laughing. He bought _toys_ , he read up on _psychology_. He isn't going to die."

Bruce flashes him a look that's half-scared and half-sympathetic. "So you're saying that now the temptation to let go is right in front of him, now that it would be so damn easy, he isn't going to give in?"

Steve takes a deep breath, steels himself, nods. "He's stronger than you think. And he wants Maria more than he even realizes, I think. He has come too far to go giving up now." Absentmindedly, he strokes his thumb over Tony's knuckles. "He does need to rest, though. If you don't let him sleep at all, how is he going to recover?"

Bruce's eyes narrow, but then he gives in. "Two hours, then we're waking him."

Steve shakes his head. "As long as he needs," he says. "God knows when he's going to get a full night's sleep again."

Bruce casts a glance at the machines beeping away off to the side of the room. "Doctor Bouvier?" he asks.

Bouvier speaks with the tight voice of someone completely focused on the task at hand. Steve shudders to imagine what's happening on the other side of the screen. "Let him sleep," he says. "If his vitals change, even a little, wake him up."

Bruce still looks dubious, but nods his assent. Dr. Bouvier is the expert, after all, the foremost expert in male pregnancies in North America.

Before Steve's own quiet doubts can begin to eat at him, the nurse returns with a tiny, swaddled bundle of pink in her arms. "She's four and a half pounds, eighteen and a half inches," she announces to the room as a whole. "Small, as expected, but healthy. She's breathing on her own, suction and swallow reflexes are there, but it'll take some patience to feed her. Her temperature needs to be regulated. But overall, she's better than expected."

Steve feels a weight on his chest he never even realized was there release and he lets out a long breath of relief. He knows the risks with preemies. More intimately, probably, than most people. He is one, after all. Maybe he just hasn't been able to stomach worrying about that on top of everything else. "She okay?" he asks, fishing for a confirmation he suddenly needs as badly as he needs to breathe.

"She's great," the nurse says, looking him up and down. "You the father?"

Steve flushes, shakes his head, tries to dislodge a momentary stab of longing. "Godfather," he says, and the pride he feels at that word is almost enough to dispel the yearning.

She casts a quick glance at Tony's pale face, slack with sleep against the pillows, then returns her attention to Steve with a soft smile. "Well, then, how about you meet your Goddaughter?"

Steve lets go of Tony's hand, nervous, suddenly, more than a little uncertain, and moves his arms into position. The nurse carefully places the tiny bundle in the crook of Steve's elbow and takes a step back. Steve's gaze is immediately drawn downwards. She's so tiny that even swaddled in a thick, fluffy, impossibly soft blanket, she easily fits on one arm. Carefully, he lifts his free hand and moves away the edge of the blanket that's fallen down to cover the baby's face. And God, she is tiny. Everything's a perfect miniature, tiny nose, tiny round cheeks, tiny rosebud mouth. Her sparse lashes and eyebrows are so dark a brown they're almost black, perfectly matching the lock or two of downy hair that peeks out from under the small cap the nurse must've put on her. Her lips are moving continuously, soundlessly, as if she's already gearing up to be a complete motor mouth. 

"Is she hungry?" he asks absentmindedly, doesn't look up at all. He doesn't think he can look away from her if he tries. She's gorgeous, but in a way that makes him drink it in and file away for memory rather than the way that makes him itch for charcoal and sketchbook. Tiny and warm and soft, and Steve can't help but trace her miniscule features with the pads of his fingers. Briefly, her eyes blink open, round and unfocused, the same warm, dark brown as Tony's. They flutter back shut almost right away, but Steve's breath has already caught, and God, he knows she isn't his, and he has never believed in love at first sight anyway, but. He does, he does love her, darn it, and he's going to keep her safe, every way he knows how.

"Maybe a little," the nurse says. "She didn't eat much earlier. She'll need to be fed frequently the first few weeks, until her reflexes are more developed and she can eat more at a time." A pause. "I'll go fetch a bottle for you, shall I?"

Steve thinks he nods, isn't all that sure, though. Somehow, he finds a chair and sinks into it, still holding Maria against his chest. Off to the side, he's vaguely aware that Dr. Bouvier has finished patching Tony back up and started speaking, low-voiced, with Bruce. He dismisses those details after taking a moment to make sure Tony's still sleeping peacefully. Then he leans back in the chair and shifts the baby closer, pushing the blanket slightly more out of the way, catches sight of the hem of the tiny lavender onesie he remembers buying weeks ago. A tiny bit further back, and one tiny, flailing arm frees itself. He's not sure he's ever seen fingers that small, and yet they are perfectly formed, the tiny nails grown out, a bit transparent, but so real, like any other human being's. And then that hand finds his thumb. Miniscule fingers wrap around and hold on, surprisingly strong.

Then the nurse is back with the bottle and Steve's feeding her and watching her eat, and being guided through burping her, and then she's as deeply asleep as Tony. Steve helps move both Tony and Maria back upstairs, into the master bedroom where JARVIS can keep an eye on the vitals and create the perfect temperature. Steve fetches the Moses basket from the nursery, can't really bear leaving either Tony or Maria alone, and moves it into Tony's bedroom, transfers her into it and makes sure she's warm under the blankets. Then he all but collapses into the chair he pretty much considers his by now, and follows them into sleep.

Maria wakes him four times - and the diaper change was an interesting experience that only a youtube instruction video saved at all - before Steve's finally had enough sleep himself to feel marginally rested. Tony's still dead asleep, and okay, whatever he told Bruce - yesterday, was it? - he's getting worried now. He isn't naive. He truly does know the dangers of bond loss, and he isn't idiot enough to think Tony's stopped hurting, let alone stopped missing Bucky. He does know that there are risks, that it can be beyond tempting for someone with bond loss to give into any physical trauma, especially something as invasive as a surgery, and take the perceived offer to end the pain and join their soulmate.

Tony is stronger than that, though. He _is_. And he's been getting better, finding his way back on his feet, taking more of an interest in Maria's existence, more responsibility in preparing for her. Yeah, Tony's fine, will be fine, just needs to sleep this off, and then he'll open his eyes and keep forging forward with that iron will and stubborn determination. He just needs some time.

Four hours and two feedings later, and Steve's stomach is in knots. The vitals haven't changed, but Steve can't help but fear that Bruce was right. He should've listened, he really should've. And yet he can't bring himself to attempt to wake Tony. Maybe because he's afraid he won't be able to.

Dr. Bouvier and the nurse stop by again to check on Tony and Maria, exchange a few words with Bruce, but the Doctor doesn't seem too worried, which calms Steve's fears for the next few hours. Maria is awake for a bit, without seeming to want or need anything other than being held. Steve, not entirely sure what to do with her when she doesn't want anything from him - he can't just sit and stare at her like some idiot all the time - sings a few of the songs he remembers Ma singing to him almost every night the better part of a century ago. He doesn't exactly have the best singing voice, but it's not like she complains. She flails a little, but doesn't cry. Good sign, he hopes.

Romanoff and Ms. Potts stop by and Ms. Potts - Steve's fellow Godparent - all but melts at the sight of Maria, flashing Romanoff a speculative look that makes Steve hide a smile behind his hand. Barton stops by as well, and is surprisingly competent at both holding Maria and changing her diaper, and Rhodey sends a message through JARVIS that he'll be back in three days, and Steve's starting to feel pretty terrible about how many people have seen Maria before Tony's had the chance. It sets the basis for a kind of pattern that frightens him utterly.

When he asks JARVIS for the time, Tony's been out of it for fourteen hours. The knot in the pit of his stomach doubles in sizes, grows heavier until it reaches the weight of a boulder. He cannot lose Tony. _Maria_ cannot lose Tony. Bucky's already gone, and the last thing this precious little girl deserves is to be orphaned at a few days old.

Maria's asleep again, and Steve places her carefully back in her basket, trying to keep from panicking completely. He brushes a careful finger along her whisper-soft cheek, makes sure the blanket covers her tiny body properly, swallows, tries to figure out what to do. He should call Bruce, maybe, or try to talk to Tony, convince him to stay. Maybe he should--

"Hey." The word is croaked out, dry and cracked, and Steve spins around immediately, disoriented for a moment as he watches Tony's eyes blink slowly, drowsily open. "What you been up to?" Tony asks, the words slightly slurred, which is never a good sign, but right now anything is a step up from what it was a few minutes ago. "Bonding with my daughter?"

"Someone has to," Steve says, and he doesn't know the word for the emotion that rushes through him, makes him want to laugh and cry all at once, something like relief but too strong for so simple a word. "How are you?"

"Feels like someone cut me up, moved my organs around and stitched me back up," Tony says, and his words are surer now, still slow and gravelly, but with less of the slur. "Can I see her?"

Steve nods. He turns back, picks up the basket and brings it to the bed. He props Tony up into a half-seated position against the pillows, wincing in sympathy at Tony's groans when his stomach muscles pull against his stitches. Careful not to wake her, he picks Maria up out of her basket and holds her out to Tony. He helps Tony rearrange his hands and arms so he can hold her properly. "Careful on the head," he reminds.

Tony flashes him his patented I'm-not-an-idiot look before immediately returning his gaze to Maria. "Jesus Christ, she's tiny," he breathes. "Steve, look." His finger brushes over her round cheeks, her tiny chin, her button nose.

"I know," Steve says softly.

Tony smiles, blinking rapidly. "She's gorgeous," he says, voice choked. "She's." He stops, swallows, and despite the fact that he's on the verge of tears, his smile is beautiful, fragile but so, so beautiful as he glances down at the baby again.

"You did well," Steve says, and the twisting inside him is darn near physically painful. It's impossible not to reach out, not to express it somehow, and Steve leans in to press a kiss against Tony's cheek, except the moment before his lips make contact with skin, Tony turns his head back, mouth open to say something or other, and neither of them is quick enough to abort the motion before their lips brush together. Steve pulls back immediately. His lips are tingling like an electrical current has just run through them. His heart races like he's just run a marathon, or maybe five - he's not sure one could get him this winded. His cheeks are heating up already, and he's sure he's red as a tomato. As quickly as he can, he gathers himself, pulls in his dignity, tries to hide exactly what that just did to him. Then, with an honestly embarrassed smile that hopefully hides just how deep that embarrassment goes, he raises his eyes to look at Tony.

Tony's blinking up at him, eyes wide, confused. His dark lashes flutter before he gets them under control. The faintest pink laces his cheeks, and for the first time in months, Steve has no idea how to read him. Tony wets his lips, and Steve can't help the jump of _something_ inside him. Tony clears his throat. Then, "Did you come up with a name yet?"

Steve takes a deep breath, allows the avoidance. Now is so not the time anyway. Probably never will be. "Aibhlinn," he says.

Tony hums, looks down at the baby again. "I'm guessing that's not spelled at all like how you just said it," he says. "I'm betting Evelyn will be pleased, though." The hopeful little look that crosses his face at that gives Steve some measure of hope that it'll be time to let those two meet up again soon. Besides, Evie will make life very uncomfortable for him if she doesn't get to see her niece soon. "And it fits with the ridiculously Irish middle names tradition," Tony adds. "I like it. What's it mean?"

"That someone wanted her very badly," Steve says.

Tony swallows, blinks again. Steve sees a glimmer of tears before they're gone. "I don't. I don't want to lie to her. I mean, I love her, but."

Steve flashes a him a small smile, reaches out to smooth back Tony's hair. He halts his motion halfway through, remembering what just happened moments ago. Then he forces himself to keep going, keep it natural, brushes the messy curls out of Tony's face. "I know," he says. "But it wasn't for you. It's. Bucky's wanted kids, wanted her, for as long as I can remember. I wanted her to always know that."

Tony gives a small, shaky smile, nods. "Thanks," he says. Carefully, he hands Maria back over. "Can you put her back in the basket? And get me some water, maybe?"

Steve nods, forces a smile. "Sure." This is all going to be a lot more difficult than he's imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the bookmarks, subscriptions, kudos and especially for the reviews. Sorry about scaring you like that. Can't promise I won't do it again.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting ever so slightly later than usual. I noticed a pretty jarring transition that needed to be smoothed out a bit. Hopefully that worked out all right.

"Captain Rogers," JARVIS says, pulling Steve out of a deep sleep. He starts, sits up and pushes the blanket back. "Mistress Maria is crying. Sir is unable to get her."

Steve nods, gets out of bed and pulls on a sweatshirt before heading down the hallway to Tony's room. Dr. Bouvier recommended a twenty-four hour nurse for the first few days, until Tony could move around on his own without potentially pulling his stitches. Steve shot him down, said they'd take care of it in-house, so really, this is not a surprise. He just didn't expect he'd sleep this deep. He pushes open the door, pads into the dimly lit room. Maria's cries rush out to meet him and he hurries on over, picks her up carefully. She stinks. "Dirty diaper," he tells Tony, who's managed to pull himself into a seated position and drop his feet to the floor. Tony nods, wincing. One hand is pressed tight against the surgical wound in his abdomen.

Steve carries Maria back out of the room and into the nursery, sets about clumsily changing and cleaning her before taking her back to Tony's room. "Want to hold her?" he asks.

Tony's maneuvered himself back onto the bed, curled around his stomach. Steve sees his Adam's apple bob before he shakes his head. His eyes are unfocused, staring off at something Steve can't see. His cheeks are wet with tears, and Steve feels a jab of sympathy pain in his chest.

"I can take her for the night," Steve offers. "If you want."

"Thank you," Tony croaks.

***

"What would you do?" Tony asks a couple of nights later. They're sitting against the headboard of his bed, Maria cradled against Tony's chest, happily sucking on her bottle. Tony isn't looking at her, is staring off into space like he did so often those first few months. "If someone told you you could be perfectly happy forever, that you'd never have to be alone, never feel pain again. All you have to do is let go. What would you do?"

Steve swallows, blinks. "Depends on what I'm letting go of," he says.

Tony shuts his eyes. "Can you take her?" he asks, and he sounds so exhausted, so pained and so fucking defeated that Steve wishes there was a physical enemy to fight, wishes it so bad he can taste it, so bad it hurts. It would be so much easier than watching Tony fight himself, his own longing and sorrow and regret, especially because Steve's no longer sure he's winning.

When Tony woke, Steve was naively certain he was out of the woods, had beaten the bond loss for good. Nothing's ever that simple, though, is it? He should've known better. "I'll take her," he said, carefully lifting the baby out of Tony's arms, getting himself to his feet. "You get some sleep," he says. "Get back on your feet."

Tony's going to beat this. He's made such leaps forward before. Sure, this is a setback, but if he's done it once, he can do it again. Steve has to believe that. Steve just needs to keep pulling a bit of extra weight for a while - not that he minds; Maria is worth more sleepless nights than he'll ever have. Soon enough, Tony will be just fine.

***

"Rogers," Romanoff snaps. "Head in the game, Soldier." She follows that last bit up with a jump kick aimed straight for his head, and it's all Steve can do to step out of the way, belatedly realizing he should've grabbed her foot and flipped her. Darn it, he's out of practice. Before he's even done with that thought, she's on him again, and Steve can't think for how fast he's got to move, to react, to even attempt to keep up with her. She's faster than anyone he's ever fought. Not as strong as Red Skull or the Chitauri, but so darn fast even Steve, whose brain processes input much faster than that of the average human, can't properly keep up. And still, despite the distraction, he can't help but take the barest fraction of a second to glance at the door. The side of Romanoff's hand gets him in the jaw, and then her legs wrap around his neck, and he's off balance enough that he topples down with her. "God damn it, Rogers," she says once she's got a knife against his throat. "He's not even in the room, and he's distracting you."

Steve grits his teeth. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Romanoff sighs, slips the blade back wherever she's hiding it. "Codependence isn't a good look on you, Cap."

Steve flashes her a glare. He has no idea what that word means, but her tone makes it pretty darn clear it's not exactly a good thing. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm just a bit rusty."

"Wouldn't be if you hadn't ignored things like training and sparring for the past seven months," Romanoff says. "I let you get away with that, for better or worse, because of your own issues and because separating you from Tony didn't seem like a good move for either one of you. But if you want to be leader of this team, you need to be able to hold your own in a fight. You need to--"

A mechanical noise oddly reminiscent of a throat clearing cuts her off. "I'm sorry, Agent Romanoff," JARVIS says. "But Captain Rogers has asked to be informed of signs of distress in Mistress Maria."

Steve's heart is instantly in his throat. "Is she all right?" he asks. She's with Tony, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Tony... is not good with her. Half the time when she cries, he'll stare at her with some strange mixture of fright and despondency, biting his lip bloody rather than help her. It breaks Steve's heart every single time, but at the same time some ugly, disgusting part of him is grateful that even with Tony literally back on his feet, Steve is still needed.

"I believe she is hungry," JARVIS says. "Sir got as far as heating the bottle. He appears to have frozen." The worry in JARVIS's voice is evident, and isn't it something, that Steve can hear emotion in an artificial intelligence's mechanical voice and not even find it strange?

"Sorry," Steve tells Romanoff with an apologetic smile. "Gotta run."

"Or you could not," Romanoff says, almost off-hand. "Maybe if you didn't come running every time, he'd learn how to fend for himself. She's not your kid, Cap."

Steve suppresses a wince, and then feels terrible. That statement should not hurt. Steve knows Maria is not his. She's Tony's, Tony's and Bucky's, and he has no right to feel possessive enough of her that having that pointed out hurts. He does not want to fill out Bucky's spot. Except he does want it, and that makes his whole body churn with guilt. His head is a mess of contradictions these days, want and love and guilt living alongside each other and colliding every few moments, threatening to overwhelm him. "She's still my Goddaughter," he says.

Romanoff cocks an eyebrow. "Last I checked, she hasn't been baptized."

"All the equivalent paperwork has been filled out and submitted," Steve says. "Sorry, I really have to go now." He doesn't give her time to answer, just turns and walks out the door as fast as he can while still being marginally dignified. He gets into the elevator and lets JARVIS take it up, trying to ignore the perverse sense of anticipation gathering and bubbling through his chest. And darn, but these kinds of feelings are getting harder and harder to ignore, to the point where sometimes it borders on physical pain to not reach out the way a constantly growing part of him wants to.

He makes it into the penthouse, takes in the situation with a single glance. Screams fill up the space, and Steve winces at the sound, hates the way it makes his heart feel like it's about to break. Then, suppressing a sigh, he picks the bottle up from the kitchen bar and walks over to pick Maria up from her basket. When he's gotten her into his arms and the bottle in her mouth, the place falls blessedly silent. Steve finally lets himself turn towards the couch, take in the sight of Tony sitting there, hunched over, elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. His shoulders are shaking. Steve sits down next to him, close enough to press their sides together. "How are you holding up?" he asks.

Tony shakes his head slowly from side to side. He tries to say something but chokes so badly on the words that Steve has no chance to make them out. And Steve hates this, hates how much the birth has taken out of him, how that enormous temptation to fall into the bond loss seems to have torn him to bits, nullified all the efforts they've both made to move forward. Wishes he could go back and change it somehow. How, though? Tony almost let go, but didn't. Not fully. Probably came closer than Steve ever dared think, though, and he still carries the marks of that as clear as day.

"Hey," Steve says, keeping his voice soft. Careful not to jostle Maria, he knocks their shoulders lightly together. Every bit of him that's touching Tony feels like it's on fire. "It's all right. You can tell me."

Tony's leg starts to bounce. "I don't know what to do," he says at last. "I'm useless. He'd be so disappointed in me, and, and." He stops, draws in a breath that seems to shudder through the room. "Every time she cries, every time she needs me, all I can think is that he should be here. He'd know what to do. He'd be _good_ with her, and I just. I'm so scared, and it hurts so bad." He snorts. "I'm pathetic."

Steve bites his lip, uncertain. He wants to reassure Tony that of course Bucky wouldn't be disappointed, that of course things would be fine, but the fact of the matter is that Buck wasn't always the most patient man, and he always had a temper when it came to the people he loved not living up to what he thought was their potential. He refused to talk to Steve for days after he dropped out of art school to be able to help pay their bills. "You're not pathetic," he settles on saying. "You're just not having an easy time of it. This whole situation... It would've killed a weaker person, you know that. You just need time."

Tony finally straightens a bit, lets his head drop to the side until it's resting on Steve's shoulder, and Steve ignores the way his own breath catches at the gesture. "That's not good enough," he says. "I need to do better. I need to." He stops, takes a deep breath, lets it out on a long sigh. Bucky's dog tags clink against the arc reactor where it's exposed by another cut shirt. "Thanks for helping. Don't know what we'd do without you." Another deep, careful breath. "Can I--"

"You know you don't need to ask," Steve says. "She's yours, isn't she?" With that, he gingerly pulls the bottle from Maria's mouth, puts it back on the table and hands her over to Tony. She begins to cry the moment she realizes her milk is gone, calms incrementally when Tony's arm wraps around her, and then Tony's picked up the bottle and put the nipple back to her lips, and it's crisis averted. Against his better judgment, Steve wraps an arm around Tony's shoulders, pulls him close against his side. He both hates and loves how darn good it feels.

***

"I thought you'da brought Tony along too," Evie says when she's finished greeting Steve and cooing over Maria, who she's now holding to her chest with clear affection. She keeps glancing down with a soft, little smile, can't seem to stop looking at the baby, and Steve can't get over how surreal this must be for her, eighty-six years old and holding her three-week old niece. Not that it's not surreal for Steve. It is, so much, Evie's age next to Maria's frail youth putting all the time passed into sharp perspective.

Steve sighs. "I don't think he's ready yet," he says. "He's. Things are a bit up and down, yanno?"

She gives a sad nod. "It's a wonder anybody can be sad with someone like this little darlin' around," she says. "I guess maybe that's just easier."

"Bein' sad is easier?" Steve asks, cocking an eyebrow.

Evie takes a deep sip of her overly complicated coffee something or other. "We didn't have stuff like this back in the day, did we?" She sighs, glances down at Maria again. "Bein' sad is easier 'cause when you beat down that sadness, you gotta fight your way back to your feet, back to life, gotta take up all your responsibilities again, and it feels like lettin' go means it didn't matter. And takin' responsibility for this little one means facin' the fact that Buck won't ever be there." She puts down her mug and reaches out to squeeze his hand. "Gettin' up and forgin' on is the hardest thing a person can do. When my boy died, it took years before it weren't an effort to get outa bed every mornin'."

Steve winces in sympathy. He can't even imagine, doesn't want to. The pain of the losses he's suffered has been bad enough, his ma, Bucky, his world. A child or a soulmate... He isn't sure he'd survive. 

"And how are you doin'?" Evie asks.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. For a moment, he wants to tell her everything, like how sometimes he looks at Tony and he can't breathe, like the way his chest closes up until it hurts. How the way he feels right now makes what he once felt for Peggy seem like childish infatuation. He can't, though. He can't look at Bucky's sister and tell her he's in love with Bucky's soulmate. He knows she knows he feels something, but if she knew the extent... He doesn't know if he'll see disgust or pity in her eyes. Neither one is something he thinks he knows how to deal with right now. "Just swell," he says.

She raises a delicate, white eyebrow. "Remember how we useda tease Charlie when she found out Giovanni Rosso was steppin' out with another girl?" she asks. "How she refuseda get outa bed and said everythin' hurt? We all laughed at her. I guess we all know better now, don't we?"

And suddenly, Steve wants desperately to change the subject. "What's 'codependence' mean?"

"Yeah," she says softly. "We won'ta had that word back then either, would we?" She gives a soft sigh. "Who said that to ya?"

Steve gives a small shrug. "Romanoff," he says. "Told me it ain't a good look on me."

Evie looks inexplicably sad for a moment. "She's right," she says. "The two'a you've been so lucky to have each other, but there's a line, Stevie. And I think maybe you crossed it. You make it too easy for each other not to move on. You let him get away with too much, and he lets you fill your whole world with him an' Maria. Stevie, what happens when two people are shipwrecked in the ocean, panicking?"

Steve swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. He doesn't want to listen, doesn't want her words to make sense. It's easier to answer her question than to think right now. "They grab onto each other," he says. "They both drown."

"Exactly."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for the bookmarks and subscriptions, for leaving kudos and especially for commenting. Means the world.  
> Second to last chapter, but that does not mean the end is nearing. As I've said, this is going to be its own series. I won't start posting the next story immediately, but there should definitely be something up by December at the earliest. Thank you for sticking with me this far.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is fairly short, but it was kind of always meant to be that way.  
> Additional warning for Tony being a dick.

Steve hates it, absolutely hates it, but with every single day that passes, he becomes more and more afraid that Evie is right. Tony isn't getting better, and Steve, well, Steve isn't getting better either. Tony still freezes at the sight of Maria in distress, and Steve isn't sure he knows how to push Tony these days, too scared that he might get pushed back. So he picks up the slack, which of course gives Steve further excuses not to spend as much time training or just being around the rest of the team. Further excuses to keep spending as much of his time as possible with Tony and Maria and ignore the existence of the rest of the world and all the impossible ways in which it's changed, in which _he's_ changed. And every single day his feelings for Tony grow that much more painful.

Knowing all this and doing something about it are two completely different things. Steve is capable of knowing, of acknowledging the problem. Dealing with it feels insurmountable. Is there even a way of dealing with it that won't smash his heart to pieces?

"You know what you should do?" Romanoff asks one day after training. "You should buy a bike, like the one you had back in the good old days. Go on a road trip. See the country again, see the people, the world you're living in now. Go see some of the things that haven't changed, even. Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone. Could be fun, you know. Could be good for you."

Steve knows what she's doing, knows why. The more aware he is of the problem, the more aware he becomes of everyone else's awareness, of the way Bruce looks at him with concern and Ms. Potts looks like she wants to cry every time she sees Tony. Even Barton is showing unease. And that is just another thing to sit there in the pit of his stomach, grind at him. If his team is scared for him, doesn't trust his competence, how is he supposed to lead? He hates the way this all feels, the way everything's crumbling around him, the way what little foundation he's managed to build here in this strange time seems to be cracking under his feet. "I'm needed here," he says anyway, and kind of wishes JARVIS would cut in with an excuse for him to hightail it out of here again.

Romanoff shakes her head. "No," she says. "You're not." She doesn't elaborate, but then she doesn't really seem like the type to say more than she feels is necessary. And what does it say that he still has to use words like 'seem' about someone he's been living in close quarters with - outside of her missions, of course - for over seven months? He should know her better than that by now, should know them all better. He doesn't.

***

The next week is hell. Steve can't stop thinking, can't stop hearing Romanoff and Evie's words in the back of his head. Can't stop feeling like he's been punched in the stomach every time he sees Tony. The thought of leaving scares the heck out of him. The thought of not seeing Tony and Maria every day makes his breath come too fast, makes cold sweat break out all over his body. He doesn't have to go to such extreme measures, though, does he? He can handle this, can fix things from right where he is.

Except he can't. He can't stop himself from running to the rescue when Maria's cries break his heart and Tony stands frozen. He can't make himself take time away from Tony and Maria to spend on the others. He can't, even though he can see, now, how wrong it's all gotten, how off track everything is.

He starts looking at motorcycles on the Internet, tries to figure out what he can afford on his humble back pay - dollars really aren't worth what they used to be, are they? He looks for a few minutes, then turns off the tablet, tries to control his own breathing. The thought of taking a few weeks to travel shouldn't be enough to make him panic, but it is. It's enough to make him break out in cold sweat, make his chest squeeze and his eyes burn. Still, he keeps coming back to the search. And then he's looking up places to see in modern America, just a few moments each time, but then those moments are getting longer and longer, and when he buys the motorcycle, he knows he's already made his choice.

The much harder part is going to be telling Tony.

***

"You're what?" Tony's voice is growing high-pitched. His eyes are blown wide. Aside from the high spots of pink anger on his cheeks, his face has gone pale, has gone constantly paler throughout Steve's whole speech. "Steve, you're leaving? You can't leave, you can't, you-- You _promised_. You promised you'd be here."

Steve swallows. It hurts. Seeing Tony like this hurts. He wants so badly to take it all back, to say he'll stay, but he can't. It's like Evie said. If they keep going like this, keep clinging onto each other like this, they're both going to drown, and pull Maria down with them. "I promised I'd be there for you," Steve says, and he hates how weak his voice sounds. "That doesn't have to mean present, physically, in the same place. It can also mean that when you need to talk, I'm on the other end of a phone. If there's an emergency with Maria, I can fly in. Right now, though, I have to go. Just for a bit. I'll be back, but I need to." He lets out a sharp breath, runs a hand over his face.

Tony shakes his head, fast and manic, can't seem to stop, and Steve is half-scared it's going to fall off. Right now, though, that's probably the least of his worries. If Tony starts reaching out through the broken bond again... He's going to hurt himself, and Steve doesn't want to know what a grand mal might do to his still healing surgical wound. "You can't," Tony's saying. "You can't. _I_ can't, I can't take care of her, Steve, I can't. I--"

On the absolute verge of crying, Steve reaches out and wraps his arms around Tony's trembling form, pulls him close, shushes him. "Of course you can," he says. "She's your baby girl. She's this tiny little beautiful piece of Bucky you somehow got to keep despite everything. You can take care of her, I know you can. I believe in you."

Tony's still shaking his head, breath hitching even as he refuses to sob. "You have to stay, Steve, please. Tell me what to do. I'll do anything."

Steve bites his lip sharply, struck by the wrongness in a way he hasn't been yet. This isn't Tony, isn't the Tony Stark he should be. Steve knows enough to know that Tony Stark in his right mind would never beg anyone for anything. And that's such a big part of it, isn't it? The fact that Steve has let him wallow in the bond loss rather than push him to move forwards, because it means he keeps needing Steve. And it is so tempting to just keep going like that, so darn tempting, but Steve owes them both better than that. And right now he's the only one strong enough to ensure it. "Tony, I have to go," Steve says, forcibly keeping his voice from cracking.

Tony draws back just enough to look at him, eyes big and wet, hair and beard disheveled. He's gorgeous. And suddenly, despite the situation, despite the wrongness of it, all Steve wants is to kiss him, can't stop his own gaze from flicking down, taking in chapped, perfectly formed lips. He looks up again a bare split second later, but Tony's looking at him oddly now, eyes narrowed just a bit. His eyes flick down. He takes a step closer, close enough to bring them chest to chest, close enough that he has to tilt his head back, just a bit, to look at Steve. Slowly, he lifts one hand, strokes it over Steve's cheek, leaving a tingling, hot trail in its wake. Steve feels his breath catch in his throat, feels himself shudder minutely. Tony's hand settles on his jaw, tilts his head down, and then Tony's breath is wafting over Steve's lips, warm and enticing, and Steve's own breath is coming too fast, in small shudders he can barely control.

And then Tony kisses him.

Heat rushes through Steve, and for long moments he's too stunned to react, to do much of anything. Then his hands are reaching out all on their own, settling on Tony's hips, and his lips are parting under Tony's assault. Tony licks into his mouth, and it should be embarrassing how weak his knees feel, how fast his pulse is pounding, and it feels incredible, but so, so wrong. Squeezing his eyes shut, Steve moves his hands to Tony's shoulders, pushes him away. "Tony," he says, voice cracking down the middle. "Stop."

Tony stares up at him, eyes still too-wide, too desperate. "Steve? This is." He stops. His Adam's apple bobs, and it's all Steve can do not to follow it with his eyes. "This is what you want," Tony says. "Isn't it?"

The words are like punches to the stomach, and Steve's chest is tight, painful. "No," he says. "No, it isn't." Not like this, not ever like this.

And then, right before his eyes, the transformation happens. Tony's face, which has been so open for months now, hardens, as if he's pulled on a mask. His mouth firms and his eyes narrow. His shoulders go set and strong, and part of Steve is glad to see it, to see that he's still got the strength to pull himself together like this. He's going to need it. Steve just wishes it didn't have to hurt so bad. "Fine," Tony says, and his voice is sharp and strong, stronger than it's been for months. "Fine. Get the hell out of my Tower."

Steve nods, turns on his heel and walks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This is not the end!**
> 
> There'll be a bit of a wait while I work on Case 623, but the second installment to this series-in-a-series should start getting posted sometime before the New Year, hopefully sooner, depending on how distracted the WinterIron Holiday Exchange makes me.
> 
> In the meantime, thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read through this whole thing. Thanks for the kudos, the bookmarks, the subscriptions, and especially for all the comments that kept me fuelled and smiling throughout this whole process. Meant the world to me.


End file.
